Ride That Pony: Steven Wright

WHEN COMEDIAN STEVEN WRIGHT emerged in the 1980s, his deadpan monotone baritone baffled some, but made rabid fans of others. His live shows consisted mostly of one-liners, but they were often so clever — or cleverly obtuse — that he amassed a pretty devoted cult following. You'll find entire Web pages and e-mail chains that showcase Wright-isms such as "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it" or "What's another word for 'thesaurus'?"

The Boston-based comedian became nationally known after making numerous appearances on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show," during which the affable host always seemed bemused by Wright's ramblings. After his hit 1985 album "I Have a Pony" was nominated for a Grammy Award, Wright moved into film. Clearly, action-adventure wasn't in the cards for the cerebral Emerson College graduate. But black comedy was. Wright's 30-minute film "The Appointments of Dennis Jennings" stars the comedian as an isolated dreamer who murders his uncaring psychiatrist only to wind up in prison where he's assigned ... a similarly insensitive shrink. The film, which Wright co-wrote, won an Academy Award for live-action short film.

After that, Wright made sporadic — but nonetheless memorable — appearances in a variety of films, with his best-known roles being in "Natural Born Killers" and "Half-Baked." He also had a recurring role in the television sitcom "Mad About You." Last year, Wright staged a comeback of sorts when he aligned with Comedy Central for a special, "When the Leaves Blow Away." His just-released CD "I Still Have a Pony," is culled from that special and marks his first release since 1985, back when albums were actually called albums and pressed on vinyl.

There's no doubt the deadpan comedian finds humor in putting out a second album decades later, as if nothing had happened in the meantime. There's also little doubt that the years have left Wright virtually unchanged. Like an artist that uses a very limited palette, Wright employs a singular delivery for all of his material — the vocal equivalent of a blank stare. We're talking "Dawn of the Dead" without the sunrise part. Since he can't rely on animated phrasing (like Jerry Seinfeld) or climactic outbursts (like Chris Rock), Wright's material needs to be top-notch all the time.

That's happily the case on "I Still Have a Pony." Laughs begin the moment Wright opens with his trademark expressionless "thanks." The 13-track disc is mostly made up of surreal mini-stories, such as "I Met This Woman," where Wright gets dumped because he returns a girlfriend's exquisitely written love letter with his signature replacing hers ("Apparently, she didn't like what she wrote," he quips). There are also the expected droll turns-of-phrase (example: "If heat rises, heaven must be hotter than hell").

Wright's routines are still rife with non-sequitur turns and defiant strangeness, but that's part of his idiosyncratic charm. He might check his emotions at the door, but he remembers to bring the laughs.

Express caught up with Wright recently for a chat.

» EXPRESS: Why was there a 22-year gap between albums?
» WRIGHT: Because when I made the first one, the material got so known that I couldn't really do much of it anymore. Then when I had enough to do a second one, I was concerned that would happen again. You always have to have material they don't know, so I didn't know if I made a second one do I have a third one in me? And if I make a third one do I have a fourth one in me? So then I decided not to do any. So then time went by and I piled up all this material, and recently I thought, "I'm gonna put one out with the DVD I just did to get one out there to try to reach a younger audience." So that's why there was such a gap.

» EXPRESS: How did your first stage performance come about?
» WRIGHT: I wanted to do it since I was 14 watching "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson" all the time. It was my dream to do that. So when I got out of college in Boston there was a comedy club and I thought, "Well, here's a club right here in the city. I have to go try my dream." So I went and watched a show and then decided I would go back two weeks later to the open mike night. So during that two weeks I wrote three minutes of material and memorized and went to the open mike and forced myself to go up to the mike. I say forced myself because I had a lot of stage fright and my legs were shaking and I was very nervous.

» EXPRESS: Your Web site biography is comically economic. What's something about you people don't know?
» WRIGHT: I am very into exercising by riding a bicycle. I have a racing bike that I do about an hour and 20 minutes a day in the summer. In the bad weather I'm on a stationary bike. I'm addicted to riding a bike — I've been doing it for about 15 years. I also downhill ski, which I've been doing since I was about eight.

» EXPRESS: What inspired you to incorporate music as part of your act?
» WRIGHT: I'd been fooling around with the guitar for years. When I started doing stand-up, I think one day I was fooling with some chords and I had some new jokes in my head and I started singing them over the chords. Then I thought that maybe I should try making up some weird songs and that could be another thing I could do on stage.

» EXPRESS: How do you manage to come up with so many one-liners?
» WRIGHT: Whenever anyone wakes up in the morning till when you go to sleep, like a thousand pieces of information go past you. Like, you're going to get coffee, you read something on a bulletin board, you have a conversation with someone who says a word, or you hear some concept and just some of those things just jump out to me as jokes. I can't sit down at a desk and write jokes. They come from me reacting to my surroundings.

» EXPRESS: You've been on "Dr. Katz" and "The Simpsons." Now that you're with Comedy Central, will "South Park" be next?
» WRIGHT: Hmm ... I don't know. That would be up to them, I guess.

» EXPRESS: I've noticed themes of violence crop up in your work — notably the musical numbers and 1989 short film "The Appointments of Dennis Jennings." What do you think Dr. Katz would say about that?
» WRIGHT: A friend of mine, comedian Mike Donovan, did a show with me the other night and he commented on the violence. I didn't really notice it, because I guess I'm so used to it. Dr. Katz would probably want to go back into my childhood — not that I had a violent past.

» EXPRESS: How different is your real personality from your on stage persona?
» WRIGHT: I'm way more expressive in real life. I laugh with my friends. If I'm driving and someone cuts me off, I'll say [shouts] "What the hell are you doing!?" But on stage I'm seriously trying to say the joke the right way. So it just became my style because I was trying to remember what the hell I was gonna say. But the audience sees this one angle of my existence — they see my talking blankly and saying those insane jokes.

» EXPRESS: Very early in your career you had a role in "Desperately Seeking Susan." Do you have any interesting Madonna stories?
» WRIGHT: She had this watch that looked like a little radio, but it was a watch. She had a video, the song was called "Into the Groove." The song was from that movie and they used footage from the movie in the video. So I'm in a Madonna video, which I think is pretty surreal.

» EXPRESS: Finally, have you ever discovered another word for "thesaurus?"
» WRIGHT: Ha. No, I haven't. That's funny.

Written by Express contributor Tony Sclafani

Top and bottom photos by Jorge Rios; others courtesy Steven Wright