Virginia-native comedian Patton Oswalt returns home to perform live at The Lyric in Baltimore, Maryland, on Friday.
He admits that it’s a tricky time to craft standup material after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
“I’m sure I’ll be talking about it,” Oswalt told WTOP. “I don’t how I’ll talk about it yet, but you can’t not. I feel like at this point if you don’t talk about it you look like you’re insane. … I don’t have anything in my head yet, but I have until Friday to get my head together on it, so I’m sure I’ll have an angle on it by then. We’ll see.”
Aside from the chaotic political elephant in the room, what else will Oswalt be talking about in his routine?
“I hate to sound too general, but just life as I’m living it in a very crazed, accelerationist world, how I’m trying to stay funny and sane, which I think most people are trying to do, I just happen to be funnier because I’ve been doing this for so long,” Oswalt said.
It’s OK if he sounds too “general” because he was named after one of the most famous American generals ever. Born the son of a U.S. Marine Corps officer in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1969, Oswalt was named after World War II General George Patton, a year before Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning movie script for “Patton” (1970).
“I think he was writing when I was being born, oh my goodness, I think he was writing that script — it’s all coming together!” Oswalt said. “My birth manifested the Oscar that (actor George C. Scott) turned down — think about that! ‘You beautiful bastard, I read your book!’ — and a baby is born.”
As a military brat, Oswalt moved with his family from Ohio to California before finally settling back in Sterling, Virginia. He graduated from Broad Run High School in Ashburn in 1987 before earning a B.A. in English from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, which gave him an honorary doctorate last year.
His early standup acts roasted legendary NBC Washington and WJLA movie critic (and my great friend) Arch Campbell.
“I have since met him and love him,” Oswalt said. “There is a very grudging affection for him.”
Oswalt said he remembers Campbell trashing Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and “The Road Warrior.”
“He gave me something to rebel against,” Oswalt said. “He was so himself that he gave me something to be like, ‘No, this guy is wrong!’ Tell him that I am happy that he was a worthy foe when you go on his podcast. I love Arch.”
Soon, Oswalt made his way west to San Francisco, California, to take his standup career to the next level.
“The comedy scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s on the East Coast was starting to collapse a little bit,” Oswalt said. “The boom was over and I needed to go to a city where I could live cheap and get a lot of sets to get good.”
In the early 90s, Oswalt said he lived cheap in San Francisco, eating 75-cent burritos: “A couple of those would keep you alive, and then you would just go do sets every night, it was great.”
Upon moving to L.A., he made his acting debut in “The Couch” episode of “Seinfeld” (1994), playing a video store clerk as George Costanza (Jason Alexander) tried to rent “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” instead of reading the book.
“It was my first ever television acting gig and I was so nervous. [Alexander] could see how nervous I was and right before they said, ‘Action!,’ he leaned into me and said, ‘It’s not too late to be fired, Patton,’ and it made me laugh so hard that it got rid of all of my tension,” Oswalt said. “I kind of owe a big leap in my career to that guy. He was very nice and very instinctive as a fellow actor.”
After that, Oswalt began writing for the hit sketch-comedy series “MADtv” before joining the sitcom cast of “The King of Queens” (1998-2007), playing Kevin James’ nerdy friend Spence Olchin.
“He was really fun,” Oswalt said. “I got to do a lot of stuff with Jerry Stiller. I got to do a lot of plots where I fall in love with a mascot at an amusement park, or I date a gay guy to try to boost my confidence — I just want him to hit on me so I can turn him down, but he never hits on me, then I start pursuing him.”
The show allowed an outlet for him to act in “edgier stories,” he said.
“It was a very good nine years where I basically got paid to learn how to act better,” Oswalt said.
He next narrated “The Goldbergs” (2013-2023) similar to Daniel Stern’s voiceover on “The Wonder Years.”
“I had been doing so much narration and voiceover at that point that I just decided to make it my own voice,” Oswalt said. “They started the show focused on the kids, then they realized the parents were crazier. … Wendi McLendon-Covey and her whole overprotective Philly helicopter mom in the ’80s was truly amazing. Getting to watch that show while I narrated it was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is a nice gig. I’m not complaining about this.'”
Still, his voice is best known as the hero of Pixar’s Oscar-winning animated film “Ratatouille” (2007), voicing the aspiring rat chef Remy, who has to please a snobby food critic voiced by Peter O’Toole (“Lawrence of Arabia”).
“I remember I was at Pixar one day and they had just recorded Peter O’Toole,” Oswalt said. “They got his audio in and the animators were listening to it, they hadn’t animated it yet, and they were rubbing their hands together like, ‘These are the Glengarry leads of animation.’ … It’s a fantastic film right up there with ‘Up,’ saying something about life, creativity and how to live with both. It’s very entertaining but way deeper than you think it is.”
Along the way, Oswalt has of course cranked out tons of standup comedy, from his 1996 HBO special to his third comedy album recorded at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium to air on Comedy Central.
So far, seven of his comedy albums have been nominated for Grammys: “My Weakness is Strong” (2010), “Finest Hour” (2012), “Tragedy Plus Comedy Equals Time” (2015), “Talking for Clapping” (2017), “Annihilation” (2019), “I Love Everything” (2021) and “We All Scream” (2023). He won for “Talking for Clapping” on Netflix.
“The one that I think is my strongest is ‘Annihilation,'” Oswalt said. “‘Talking But Clapping’ was a weird time doing that. My wife had just passed away, the whole year was very, very strange, it was a surreal time, but if you’re talking about where did I dig the deepest but still got laughs, I would say ‘Annihilation’ is the one I’m most proud of.”
Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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