newjerseynewsroom.com

BY BOB HOLT

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Comedian Steven Wright knows that you can’t have everything. One of his own favorite jokes says that you never know what you have until it’s gone. Wright wanted to know what he had, so he got rid of everything.

While Steven Wright didn’t have everything, but he sure had a lot in the 1980s. Wright won an Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Film in 1989 for “The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, and he was nominated for a Grammy in 1986 for his CD, “I Have a Pony.”

22 years later, Wright received another Grammy nomination for his follow-up recording, “I Still Have a Pony.” Steven says that he only releases one CD a century to avoid overexposure.

Wright still tours on a regular basis today. He will be appearing at the Borgata in Atlantic City on Friday, Nov. 4. He said his joke about everything gets about a 4, sometimes a 5 from his audiences on a scale of 1 to 10. “I broke my own rule,” Wright explained. “I kept that joke in, even though the audience didn’t really love it. I like it. I kept it in anyway. Usually if they don’t like it, I throw it away.”

Perhaps the reason a person can’t have everything is because, as Wright has told his audiences, “It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.”

Wright enjoys painting during his time away from the stage. “I painted a lot during the summer,” he said. “I go through phases. Art is just, like a feeling that I need to go and get some paint. It’s all abstract, and a complete gut feeling right onto the canvas.” In explaining art to the uninitiated, Wright said, “Art depends on how each individual reacts to it. There are no rules, and you don’t have to have a certain amount of knowledge about it.”

Like his art, Wright claims that about three-fourths of his comedy material was abstract right from the start. “One-quarter was more normal-type comedy,” he said. “Referring to his familiar deadpan style and monotone delivery, Wright said, “I talked like this right from the beginning. This is how I speak. As I settled into liking the abstract material, then it went like that. It evolved pretty quickly, actually.”

He says he isn’t writing all the time, he just writes when something comes into his head. “Sometimes nothing comes into my head for awhile, then a little bit, then a lot. It’s like the rain, really.” He added, “I think the 'Bucky Goldstein' joke may have gotten my biggest laugh ever.”

In that joke, Wright speaks of the day he got on a bus and sat beside a gorgeous blond Chinese girl.

“The girl told me, ‘I saw my analyst today and he said I have a problem.’ So I asked, 'What's the problem?' She replied, 'I can't tell you. I don't even know you.'

I said, 'Well, sometimes it's good to tell your problems to a perfect stranger on a bus.'

So she said, 'Well, my analyst said I'm a nymphomaniac and I only like Jewish cowboys... By the way, my name is Denise.'

I said, 'Hello, Denise. My name is Bucky Goldstein.'”

Wright says that he gets plenty of free time to paint between his tour dates. “I pick when I want to go on tour,” he said. “I talk to the agency about what months I want to go. Where I go, I don’t care. I run around, but I get lots of time off.”

Other hobbies Wright enjoys during that free time include movies, and he also owns a racing bike. He says, “I love to ride my bike, and I ride almost every day when the weather’s good. I also like to read.”

Wright’s author of choice at the present time is Charles Bukowski, Bukowski, who died in 1994, has written novels such as Women, Post Office, and Ham on Rye, and a collection of poems called, “Love is a Dog from Hell.”

“He’s been around for awhile, but I never heard of him until two years ago,” Wright commented. “He’s amazing.”

But he still enjoys performing, and Wright says his best audiences come from Canada. “Canada laughs more than any other country,” he related. “I’ve played in five countries, and they laugh more. I don’t know why they do, but they do. That’s why I’ve done two specials and an album there.”

Steven Wright got his first real break in Burbank, when he appeared on the "Tonight Show" starring Johnny Carson in 1982. Carson enjoyed his appearance so much that he invited Wright back a week later. He mentions George Carlin and Woody Allen as his main influences, saying, “Carlin was a genius in the way he looked at the world. And Woody Allen did a double comedy album before he did movies that affected me a lot.”

He added, “Now my favorite comedian is Louis C. K. He has a TV show on FX and he writes it, directs it, and acts in it. Unbelievable. And his stand-up is amazing.”

Wright also has a more extensive list of film credits than most people may realize. They include appearances in "Desperately Seeking Susan," "So I Married an Axe Murderer," "The Aristocrats," "Mixed Nuts," "Half Baked," and the voice of Bob in Babe: "Pig in the City."

Along with “The Appointments of Dennis Jennings,” Wright filmed another short, “One Soldier,” in 1999. That was about a Civil War soldier, just about to face a firing squad, who was contemplating the meaning of his own life. The soldier’s final words before they opened fire were, “Now I get it.”

As far as adding more movies to the list, Wright said, “I’m always writing pieces down. I want to do more.”

This year, Wright began writing his own story on Twitter in March, which explores the exploits of a high school student named Harold who, let’s just say, has had some issues on his way to growing up. Harold, a budding painter, is dealing with a condition that might be called the opposite of Attention Deficit Disorder, and he needs to take a class to learn how to space out in order to cure it.

“I make it up as I go along,” Wright explains. “When I go on there, I just read what the last two (tweets) were, and make it up from there. I was writing it, and then I just stopped. I haven’t written on there in a long time.”

And Wright still appears regularly on the "Late Late Show" with Craig Ferguson. “I like talking to Craig Ferguson,” Wright said, “because all of our conversations are made up.”

Wright had just arrived at home the night before we spoke to him. “It’s just good to be back in my house. I’m really excited to watch the World Series tonight. I kind of want Texas to win because they didn’t win last year,” he said. There's always next year.

An avid Boston Red Sox fan, Wright admitted that he took some consolation out of the fact that the New York Yankees had been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. “Yes, I did. Absolutely. Rodriguez struck out to end the entire series.” When we informed him that A-Rod had done the same thing two years in a row to set a major league record, Wright laughed, “Even better, thank you.”

We asked Steven what his fans can expect when he comes to the Borgata in November, and whether he has any messages for his New Jersey fans. “Wright declared, “Yes. I would like to say that when the space shuttle program ended, and they ended the whole manned space flight thing, I was disturbed because I couldn’t believe that they took that letter I sent them seriously.”

Steven Wright DVDs and CDs can be obtained at www.stevenwright.com, along with his tour schedule. Wright will be appearing at the Borgata in Atlantic City on Friday, Nov. 4 at 9:00 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at the box office for $35.