Paul F. Tompkins, Comedian

Have you guys found a spot of your own yet? Do you have a favorite restaurant already? There’s a place called Raoul’s on Prince Street. It’s one of those places that are always full of people and yet still feels intimate.

So explain how it went from an ensemble cast to you becoming the sole host of Best Week Ever. I was one of the featured people and I did get to do a lot of produced pieces where I would do sort of a solo turn. And now it’s like a lot of those in a row. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, so I’m really glad that it ended up being Best Week Ever. Because at the beginning of last year, I was thinking, “My dream job right now would be to do a show like Best Week Ever, but with me as the host. I get to hang out with fun people and make jokes all week and at the end of the week, we do a show. So I was trying to make that happen and pitching things like that around town. And not long after that, we got the call from VH1 saying they wanted to try something different with Best Week Ever. We shot a pilot and it worked out so much better than I could have anticipated. So by the time it was happening, I was really ready to do it. And it’s been great. It’s been so much fun. I feel like we’re expanding the show creatively more and more each week. We’re trying different things and really taking it in different directions and realizing we can really do whatever we wanna do. Within the boundaries of our show, there’s a lot we can explore comedically.

Do you ever experience a Best Week Ever backlash? I feel like it's a show where some people turn up their nose at it. People have been very dismissive of it even when talking to me. “Oh you’re on ‘I Love the Whatevers.’” It’s like no, it’s not ‘I Love the Whatevers.’ It’s a specific show and it’s called Best Week Ever and it’s not just, “Hey remember the Rubiks Cube?...Yes, now moving on to the next thing.” I think that’s why our show lasted throughout the different changes in VH1 programming. By having to talk about what happened in the week, it gave our show more substance than just nostalgia. Because it was things that just happened, people got a bigger charge out of it.

And now there are still people that are snobby about the show. There are people that assume that I am embarrassed about the show or am just doing it for a paycheck, like it’s inconceivable to them that I would actually be proud of the show and that I would really enjoy doing it. Which I do and which I am. So people can say whatever they want.

I think there were people who watched the show because they liked the talking heads format and I think that those people are by and large gone. We’re getting a whole new audience. In addition to people who liked me and stuck it out, we’re getting a whole new group of people who probably before would not have watched our show.

How does the show fit in with a time when everyone is ready to make a joke about the event of the moment on their Facebook status or Twitter? In a world where everybody has the ability to comment in a public forum (i.e. the internet) on things that are happening in the world, we’re trying to say, “But here’s what happens when people get paid to do it. It’s maybe a little funnier."

Speaking of Twitter, you have a pretty big presence on there. Well, not as big as some people. I think I have a little over 2,000 people who are supposedly following me. I have not yet cracked the magical six-digits that some people have. I’m up to 2,456 it says.

Who has six digits?! Shaq? I think Stephen Fry. Oh Shaq I’m sure has millions of people. A guy like Stephen Fry has three hundred and some thousand people. John Hodgman—he’s ahead of me. I don’t think he’s that far ahead of me, but he’s ahead of me. I think he’s got like twenty or thirty thousand people, smoothing like that.

I'm impressed that you really take the time to reply to a lot of people. If somebody asks me a direct question, I feel like that warrants a reply for sure. But I can’t reply to everybody because it would be too much. And I think people would stop following me. Because I’ve had to do that. Some people, they twitter way, way too much. So I go to that page and it’s fifteen, twenty tweets from one person and I’m like, “I don’t have time to go through all this.” So I try to feel it out. This seems like a good amount.

Did you sign up for Twitter as a hobby or as a professional endeavor? I definitely saw it as a professional thing that would be fun to do—to have an interaction with people in a limited way, where I felt like I was interacting with people that are maybe my fans. And maybe my fans feel like they’re interacting with me, but not in a weird way like MySpace, where I think a line is crossed. Sometimes people ask me questions and it gets too personal. And it feels really weird. “Well we’re not actually friends. I don’t really wanna discuss my engagement with you because I don’t know who you are.” But with Twitter, for lack of a better term, it’s very cordial and it’s friendly, but it’s not presumptuous. Because you only have 140 characters, it’s not enough for people to get inappropriate. And yet some people are still able to do it.

You mentioned in the comedy album you released a couple of years ago that the material you've started doing more recently is more personal as time has gone on. Was that a conscious choice? It was a gradual thing. It was getting more comfortable on stage, but also in my life. I started to get my act together a little bit. I started to let myself out on stage, to tell stories that I wouldn’t have told before that were about me. Because I’ve always liked when comedians make a connection. There’s observational material that does that. That’s one level of it. But then when it gets even a little deeper, when it can be about an emotional situation instead of just, “Don’t we all find this annoying?” When it gets into an emotional arena, I respond to that so strongly. That has always struck a chord with me when there would be comics who would do that.

And so gradually I started sharing more of myself onstage with the idea “I bet that somebody else knows what this is like.” And I wouldn’t frame it like, “Hey has this ever happened to you?” (Instead) I felt, “I wanna just tell this story and see if it resonates with people.” That reaction, when I realized that people absolutely had been there and they’ve had the same feelings that I’ve had, it’s tremendous. It’s such a great feeling because you really do feel like it brings you closer to people in such a great way.

People start to feel a little less alone. Yeah and maybe that we should not regard each other with suspicion all the time, that maybe we should not assume that everybody is out to get me.

Did diving into more personal stories force you to become more comfortable with silence? Yeah yeah yeah. And I’ll tell you what got me more comfortable with silence. There’s a room in LA called Largo and I used to perform there all the time. And the audience there was very trusting. They’re listening to me and I know that these people are not expecting it to be a laugh every five seconds. They’re trusting that I’m headed somewhere with what I’m talking about. That got me comfortable with the silence. It built up my confidence in feeling that I can go into any place and earn people’s trust to the point where I can tell this story. They’re gonna be listening to me and they’re gonna trust me enough by now—ten, twenty minutes in—that they know that I’m going somewhere with this. Because if you’re listening to someone tell a story—if it’s a good story—and they’ve said things that are already interesting, you’re not thinking, “I don’t understand. What is this guy doing? He’s not joking around. What’s happening? He’s giving me all these details. I don’t get what’s going on here.”

It's a great feeling to feel like you've built up a relationship with an audience. When an audience feels it too, that’s so much fun. We feel like we’re all here for the same purpose.

Now how difficult is it to take it from that particular audience to somewhere you're not as comfortable with? I’m always intimidated by new places. A place I’ve been a million times, I can go up there and I can say anything. At a new place, I have to do a lot of self-soothing. I have to get there as early as possible, I have to get a feel of the place so it’s not so awkward even physically. Because for me, going out onto a stage that I haven’t been on before and not knowing, “Where’s that stool? And what kind of mic stand is it?” There’s too much distracting stuff going on.

I like to be in the moment, but part of being in the moment is that there are unfamiliar things that I’m aware of. If I go on autopilot, it doesn’t matter about the mic stand. Who gives a shit? I can just flip a switch, turn on my brain and say this stuff by rote. But I don’t wanna do that. So if I really wanna be present with what’s going on, then there will be things that will distract me. But the good thing about that is there are opportunities there. I can say something funny about the mic stand. I can say something funny about hearing a noise over there. It’s trying to continually keep myself in a place of, “Anything that happen is an opportunity to have fun.”

Well you seemed to be having fun at the Y a couple weeks back with Janeane. That crowd seemed like they were really ready for a show and that goes a long way toward making someone comfortable. If I walk out on stage and feel like, “These people are cold and I have to bring them around,” it can feel like work sometimes, especially at the top of the show.

The people that work there were all great and all saying, “We’re so happy you’re here.” And you don’t get that a lot at comedy clubs. People don’t say that they’re happy that you’re here.

It's nice to perform in an arts space when comedy clubs are a bar business. That’s why I like the theater set up. The focus is on the stage. People go in there and think “we’re going to see a show” and not “we’re going to get fucked up.”

Have you been watching the (PBS stand-up comedy series) Make 'Em Laugh? I watched most of the first one last night. I can’t figure out—is it a mess that show? I had forgotten the premise of the first one was “Weirdos and Oddballs.” They’re going from Harold Lloyd to Bob Hope to now we’re at Jonathan Winters already. They mentioned Cheech and Chong, but they’re not mentioning Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor. Because I was thinking of it that they were going to go in order, as a timeline, rather than different styles of comedy. Because I’m such a comedy fan, I feel like I know all this stuff already.

What was great was seeing that Phyllis Diller stuff because I hadn’t seen a lot of that. She was someone that I grew up knowing who she was and I had seen her on TV since I was a little kid. She was really funny! She was really fun to watch. She talked about what it was like at that time, what it was like for women. And you know what? Not that much has changed today. Women have it pretty tough in comedy in what female comedians are told people will accept from them. I tend to think that if you’re good, people will like you. And with female comics, they’re constantly being told what they can do and what they can’t and what people will like and what they won’t like. And little girls are not really encouraged to be funny in the same way that guys are. There definitely have been big strides made, but the wheels turn really slowly. The wheels of progress turn, but they turn really slowly.

Do you enjoy your cameo role in your fiancèe's video blog? I like it. I would prefer to be in it even less. I love my fiancée so much and that vlog really cracks me up. It’s really crazy. I love how she keeps constantly saying, “Who knows what’s gonna happen?” It’s funny to me to pop up in that every once in a while. But it also freaks me out because that’s the real me.

In the original format of Best Week Ever, they were podcasting and would occasionally do this thing called “The Week in Paul.” It would be outtakes of me—jokes on different topics that would run a little longer. It was cool cause the show is fast paced and I tend to take a little longer. And one week it was just me talking to the crew. I was just talking about fruit. I was just saying, “I don’t like eating apples because they just start turning brown as soon as you’re eating them.” It was totally just me talking and it freaked me out. Because that’s just a completely unguarded moment, just me talking to people. And I didn’t like it at all! That’s certainly how I feel about the vlog sometimes. It’s just me talking and it’s me with my fiancée and it’s a little unnerving sometimes.

You've been "in the business" for twenty-two years. Does there come a point where you stop waiting for your big break? Yes and no. One’s perception of a big break changes because one’s priorities change. I went around kind of lost for a while. I didn’t know what success was in this business. I knew that one level of it, the most important level of it, is getting to do what you like and not worrying about the rent. Bottom line—that is success. If you have a job in show business where you are having a good time and you are paying your rent, that’s all you need. That’s a great life. And I was doing that, but I didn’t know, “Do I wanna do movies? Do I wanna be really famous? Do I wanna do a sitcom? What do I really wanna do?"

Then after I started my relationship with my fiancée, it was my first really successful, good, healthy relationship as an adult. And it was great. So that was enriching my life so much. And I realized, “Well I would like a job where I have reasonable hours and I get to have a life with my girlfriend. I don’t have to travel so much to make a living and be gone all the time. That’s what I want.” So that’s when I started thinking about hosting a TV show because it seemed like the most fun that I could have with the least amount of tiring work.

Right before this job, I was doing an episode of Pushing Daisies. That’s a single camera show, so it’s shot like a movie. And I was there for hours and hours, doing nothing. On the face of it, when you hear that, it doesn’t sound too bad—you can read a book, you can watch TV, whatever. But it’s crazy to be doing nothing for hours and hours and hours. I realized, “I don’t know how much I want this.” I realized that I don’t want this to be my regular life. I would rather my regular life be something more immediate, that’s keeping me engaged all the time. Acting is fun, but I come from stand-up and I like being funny. I like doing new things all the time as opposed to playing one character forever. Everything started to come into a sharper focus.

So that’s when I started to think, “What do I wanna do in this business?” I still wanna do a little bit of everything. But day-to-day, I love doing this job. And I will keep doing this until I don’t wanna do it anymore. Or until it gets canceled, whichever comes first. But if this show got canceled next week, I would probably try to make it happen somewhere else. It’s really enjoyable.

It's nice to hear someone in this business talk about real life being the driving force behind their decisions, instead of the usual career first mentality. Well I got caught up and it’s really easy to do. It happens without realizing; your job becomes your identity. I started to look at it differently. Wait a minute, I don’t wanna be just that. Who am I as a person? That’s what I do for a living, but who am I as a guy? And that’s when I really started to think about things in a different way. And it’s enriched my life that much more to look at it from a different perspective.

Has living in New York and being around so many people on a regular basis helped you generate more material thus far? Unfortunately no. Because doing a show like this, it’s kind of isolating. I’m in the office all the time and creatively I’m thinking in a different way. And I feel weird about that because I’m not in a stand-up head space. But it’s a matter of familiarity and being here because every aspect of my life changed. The more these things become familiar, then the more I’ll just naturally draw on my life for stand-up again.

New York becomes the broken mic stand. Wow, if we don’t end there, we’re crazy.