twi-ny talks

TWI-NY TALK: KYLE THOMAS SMITH

Kyle Thomas Smith will read from his well-received debut novel, 85A, on Wednesday night at Cake Shop

Cake Shop
152 Ludlow St. between Stanton & Rivington Sts.
Wednesday, February 16, free, 7:00
212-253-0036
www.85anovel.com
www.cake-shop.com

“Every detention, every chip of glass piercing my forearm from the inside, every minute the 85A is late drives me that much closer to London.” So begins Kyle Thomas Smith’s harrowing debut novel, 85A (Bascom Hill, August 2010, $14.95), the brutally honest story of Chicago teenager Seamus O’Grady, who is desperate to get out of a city, school, and family that relentlessly beats him down both mentally and physically. Although the plot of the book is not based on Smith’s real life — he was born and raised in Chicago and moved to Brooklyn in 2003, where he currently lives with his partner and cats — the setting is, and he does a marvelous job capturing the heart and soul of the dark underbelly of his hometown over the course of one long day in January 1989. Smith, a passionate, engaging young man with an infectious joie de vivre, has written for websites and magazines including Sentient City: The Art of Urban Dharma, Boston’s Edge, and The Brooklyn Rail, is an ardent Buddhist practitioner and meditator, and is a multidimensional, enthusiastic individual who feels right at home whether at a punk-rock show or a classical music concert, at experimental theater or an opera at the Met. Smith will be participating in the latest free monthly Mixer event at Cake Shop on February 16 hosted by Melissa Febos and Rebecca Keith, with fellow writers Jami Attenberg (The Melting Season), Deenah Vollmer (The New Yorker, The Rumpus), and Rohin Guha (Relief Work) and a live performance by the Scamps. Smith discussed his first New York City reading of 85A and more in our latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: Seamus is a fascinating character who doesn’t quite understand that with actions come consequences, at least not always the desired kind. How much did you play with Seamus’s lack of/dawning self-awareness?

Kyle Thomas Smith: I was always careful to keep Seamus’s naïveté front-and-center. On the one hand, he’s a city kid who coolly assesses every environment he enters. On the other hand, he’s a misfit and a dreamer. He’s in a bad situation at home, he doesn’t have many friends, he’s not learning in school, so he copes by escaping into fantasy. He projects these fantasies on to the wrong people and builds all sorts of castles in the air. I have always been preoccupied with the notion that there are different types of intelligence. Seamus is hopeless when it comes to academics but his imaginative capacities are off the charts. Yet it’s his imaginative intelligence that could also plunge him headlong into an abyss. In order to illustrate that conflict, I had to constantly ground Seamus’s character in “ungroundedness.”

twi-ny: Music plays a key role in 85A, but you have said that the music that inspires Seamus is not the music that inspires you. What music inspired you when you were Seamus’s age, and what music inspires you today?

KTS: Well, when I was Seamus’s age, the music I listened to and the music that inspired me were two different things. In early high school, I let the scene dictate my tastes. So I listened to a lot of Skinny Puppy and Ministry and a lot of their industrial-goth side projects, but inside I was much more drawn to Bauhaus and Joy Division and even softer stuff like the Smiths, Cocteau Twins, and Robyn Hitchcock. But things changed for me when the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa and Jane’s Addiction’s Nothing’s Shocking surfaced. That was incredible shit and it inspired me to abandon what I was supposed to be listening to and go straight for what I wanted. I went way, way, way back to basics at that point and steeped myself in the Stones (pardon my orgasm), Bowie, Lou Reed, John Cale, and Dylan (especially) — my soul was much more in alignment with all of them. I still love them and I still love the Pixies, but I’m more hooked on Miles Davis and Nina Simone these days. My partner is an opera and classical music aficionado, so my ear has become trained on the Brahms and Chopin that he’s always playing. I keep going back in time. I’m afraid I don’t know much about what’s going on in music anymore, though I do like Gnarls Barkley and Danger Mouse a lot. That’s some deep, inventive stuff right there.

twi-ny: You’ve had readings in your native Chicago, where the book is set, and now will be having your first major event in New York City, your adopted hometown. Has reaction to the book been different in each city? Based on your personal experience, what are some of the major differences between the two cities?

KTS: 85A has been well received in New York. Maybe it’s because there’s been too much written about New York already and New Yorkers are sick of always reading about themselves; they want to read about another dynamic American city for a change. And a lot of nostalgic, homesick Chicago transplants in New York tell me how much the book brings them back.

As for Chicago itself, I can’t tell you how over the moon I was when the Chicago Tribune gave 85A a great review. It was one of those hometown-boy-makes-good experiences. But Chicago is another kettle of fish. It’s an extremely proud city, and people in its music, lit, and art scenes can be incredibly territorial. I recently saw a spot-on documentary about Chicago’s 80s punk scene called You Weren’t There. The title perfectly sums up that chest-thumping, I-was-there-you-weren’t attitude that some people still cop to this day. And that attitude was on flagrant display on this one major Chicago website that posted a poorly written review of 85A that bashes Seamus and completely misrepresents the book. It set off a shit-storm of parochial, internecine comments from people who admitted that they’d never even read 85A. The day it was posted, I had just come to town and was supposed to do a reading at Quimby’s Books the following night. I had no idea how I was going to get through it. But when I got up in front of the audience, a more confident spirit overtook me and people couldn’t have been more receptive to what I was reading. So . . . Chicago can be a tough crowd but it can give a lot of love too.

The difference between the two cities — that’s a damned good question. Chicago winters are never easy, but I never knew why they got such a bad rap until I first moved to New York and then went home for a visit. Holy witch’s tit in a steel bra! How I got through daily life for so many years in that town I have no idea. I like Chicago’s modern architecture better, but New York and Chicago are both world-class cities with some of the best cultural offerings on the planet. Many New Yorkers who have moved to Chicago say they don’t miss New York at all. They say they have just as good a time in Chicago and it’s much cheaper and more manageable. I would probably see Chicago the same way if I wasn’t from there, but there just seems to be more here and you never know what you’re going to stumble upon next when you explore New York neighborhoods, no matter how long you’ve lived in its boroughs.

TWI-NY TALK: WALLY CARDONA

Wally Cardona will hold INTERVENTION #5 on February 12 at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (photo by Peggy Kaplan / artwork by Adam Shecter)

Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th St.
Saturday, February 12, $15, 8:30
www.bacnyc.org
www.wcvismorphing.org

On January 8, Brooklyn-based dancer and choreographer Wally Cardona held the first of three New York City “Interventions” at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, intimate, experimental performances created over a whirlwind five-day collaboration with a specially selected expert from outside of the traditional dance community. Working with sound artist and activist Robert Sember, Cardona developed a complex piece involving verbal and nonverbal communication and movement over the course of a series of repeated scenes, each with unique and challenging variations. On February 12, Cardona will stage INTERVENTION #5 with Martin Kapell, a design partner and architect at WASA/Studio A who specializes in designing spaces for the performing and visual arts, including the Baryshnikov Arts Center itself. “My commitment to architecture springs from the principle that everyone is entitled to the benefits of intelligent design,” Kapell notes in his online bio, “and that architecture, when approached from this belief, can directly enhance and improve the way we live, work, learn, and play.” Cardona and Kapell are just beginning their collaboration, which will be presented Saturday night at BAC; Cardona discussed that and more in a twi-ny talk held shortly after the fourth Intervention.

twi-ny: In the past you’ve collaborated with such sound, visual, and movement artists as Phil Kline, Rahel Vonmoos, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Maya Ciarrocchi, ETHEL, Douglas Fanning, and now Robert Sember. What is the anticipation like waiting to hear which collaborator has been selected for you? Do you have any inklings yet on who your collaborators will be for #5 and #6?

Wally Cardona: I now know Intervention #5 will be with Martin Kapell, and that his profession is in architecture and design. Anticipation: I suppose that begins to show up — and take on various emotional states, depending on my frame of mind — on the day of our first meeting. For me, a powerful thing in each Intervention is not just the fact that I’m meeting a person from a very different discipline or field of inquiry but that I’m meeting a complete stranger. And with the agreement that we’ll spend a week together. The first thing that happens is I perform my “empty solo” for them, and I have to confess that with each Intervention, I begin the second day wondering if the person will show up again.

twi-ny: In New York City, you’ve performed at BAM, the Joyce and Joyce SoHo, Danspace Project, the Duke, and DTW. You’re currently working at BAC. How is the space there informing the new work?

Wally Cardona: I’m glad you brought up BAC! They’ve been incredibly generous in supporting and presenting three Interventions. Each time, you never know what you’re gonna get. With a working period radically condensed to five days and an agreement to make the resources usually available to me as a choreographer also available to each “expert,” all questions re: lights, sound, audience set-up, running time, etc., are usually unknown until the last day. So, all our methods and coping mechanisms are challenged — presenter, tech crew, artist, expert, and perhaps audience.

Robert Sember, Wally Cardona, and Francis Stansky perform the challenging and inventive INTERVENTION #4 on January 8 at BAC

twi-ny: What was it like to have Misha witness INTERVENTION #4?

Wally Cardona: Misha’s got soooo much information in his body. Something wonderful happens when being watched by a person with that amount of knowledge. I’m not sure I can explain it. It’s like I see more of myself. And one thing I find incredibly inspiring about Misha is how he is able to use a minimal amount of force to maximal effect. I feel like a bull in a china shop in comparison.

twi-ny: You have given yourself a mere five days to work with each collaborator at each venue. Why do that to yourself?

Wally Cardona: The entire construct of the collaboration is not like any I’ve experienced before. The point really is to initiate — rather than find mutual agreement or choreograph a “new work by Wally Cardona.” If an expert’s desire or request puts me in an uncomfortable position that feels at odds with my own preference, patterns, likes, or dislikes . . . I’m happy. So it’s kind of like a self-imposed intervention and they are aggressive, in their own bizarre way. Each puts me on shaky ground, demands my constant attention and works best when my generosity overrides my fear.

twi-ny: The word “intervention” works on several levels but immediately conjures up an action taken against one person or event. Why did you choose it as the title of this series of collaborations, since the word “collaboration” can be interpreted to be in direct conflict with “intervention”?

Wally Cardona: People often wonder how an Intervention actually works. This is part of a paragraph given to each “expert” before we meet: “We begin as strangers and get acquainted through a weeklong working process. On Day One, I perform my ‘empty solo’ for each collaborator as a starting point and form of introduction. I present each expert with the same solo, which is designed to bend to his/her interpretation, desire, or aesthetics. What I am most interested in is what each expert might want to see even though he/she might not yet know how to make it manifest; how to do this is to be discovered, together, in the studio. Each expert is asked to think of me as a tool to be utilized and exercised, and I, in turn, call upon my own expertise to realize his/her vision. There is no system to the week and how it unfolds; it is unique to each expert. What we know is that a public performance is the final result, which the expert cannot make without me, and for which I am reliant on the expert’s opinion.”

INTERVENTION #5 takes place February 12 at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. INTERVENTION #6 is scheduled for March 26.

TWI-NY TALK: BUTT JOHNSON

Butt Johnson, “Starchitects,” ballpoint pen on 2ply Bristol, 2009-10

BUTT JOHNSON: THE NAME OF THE ROSE
CRG Gallery
548 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through February 19, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-229-2766
www.crggallery.com
www.buttjohnson.com

As we made our way last Saturday through Butt Johnson’s exquisite display of remarkably detailed drawings at CRG Gallery in Chelsea, an older couple was marveling at the show, using the gallery-supplied magnifying glasses to peer deeply into such enchanting and engaging ballpoint-pen-on-paper works as “Starchitects,” “Various Controllers, Maps, and a Robotic Accessory,” “The Ambassadors,” and a series of roses. The woman then wondered aloud, “What kind of name is Butt Johnson?” Indeed, what kind of name is Butt Johnson? The title of the RISD graduate’s first solo show, “The Name of the Rose,” was inspired by the last line of Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel: “Yesterday’s rose endures in its name; we hold empty names,” which Eco explains in the postscript means that “in this imperfect world, the only imperishable things are ideas.” The pseudonymous artist, who is also a graphic designer, gallery owner, and recipient of a 2010 Pollock-Krasner Fellowship, agreed to talk to twi-ny about his name and his imperishable ideas under one condition — that we keep his real name a mystery, at least for now.

twi-ny: Your first solo show features stunning works that mix historical motifs and pop-culture references, evoking old master drawings, obsessive outsider art, and modern technology. What specifically attracts you to to the ballpoint-pen-on-paper format? Would you consider yourself an obsessive artist, given the amount of detail that appears in your work, which takes years to complete?

Butt Johnson: I’ve been drawing with ballpoint pens since I was a kid, mostly in the margins of school notebooks . . . but in my last year in college I reached a kind of threshold with the material where I realized if I handled the ink right I could actually mimic the language of old master drawings/engravings. Since then I have been honing the craft and learning how to draw from some of my favorite old (and new) masters. I think I’m getting better, but every time I see a Dürer or a Piranesi engraving I know I have a lifetime more of learning ahead of me. I have tried ballpoint on other surfaces besides paper, such as Mylar and Formica; it does interesting things and warrants further exploration, I think, but paper contextualizes the work within a tradition, which is nice.

As for obsessiveness, I actually don’t consider myself obsessive and may take issue with the term. While the drawings do take a good amount of time to complete, I think they are very focused on specific themes and arrangements. For me the term obsessive connotes a kind of naïveté (and not necessarily in a negative way), but I think if I compare my drawings to the kind of language that I am aping, it doesn’t even hold a candle to the amount of skill and concentration that existed in previous eras. Maybe in our lightning-speed contemporary culture it may seem like it would take obsession to make this kind of work, but honestly I spend much of my day dicking around on the internet just like everyone else.

Butt Johnson could have called his show “A Rose by Any Other Name…”

twi-ny: On the CRG website, your face is blurred out, and your name is clearly a pseudonym. Why have you decided to keep your identity in the dark? And why choose such a humorous name for such ostensibly serious work?

BJ: My identity is kind of only half in the dark. . . . I don’t try to keep it absolutely hidden, but at the same time I enjoy the anonymity that both the pseudonym and the blurred-out face afford. The name Butt Johnson was a joke I pulled out of the air back in undergrad, but I found it useful in terms of how I see both the idea of authorship and the branding of works of art, so I decided to keep it.

twi-ny: In another part of your life, you run a New York City gallery. What are some of the main differences in how you approach art from those two varying perspectives?

BJ: Ha! I do indeed run an art gallery (with two wonderful partners), and approach it in a very different manner than the ways in which I produce my own work. I love doing studio visits with other artists, and the gallery helps me leave behind my drawings as a filter through which to view other works of art. In this way I can keep my mind open and curious and engage in a very direct level with artists whom I support and can work towards furthering their careers. And as a bonus, it gets me out of the house.

“The Name of the Rose” continues at the CRG Gallery through February 19. Johnson is also part of the group show “Cover Version LP” at BAM through March 20, a collection of reimagined album covers by more than two dozen artists, including Johnson’s take on Terry Snyder and the All Stars’ 1960 smash, PERSUASIVE PERCUSSION VOLUME 2.

TWI-NY TALK: JOHN SCHAEFER

The Alloy Orchestra will play new scores for silent films at the World Financial Center this week (photo by Bruce Rogovin)

NEW SOUNDS LIVE SILENT FILM SERIES
World Financial Center Winter Garden
220 Vesey St.
February 2-4, free, 7:00
212-417-7050
www.wnyc.org
www.artsworldfinancialcenter.com

For nearly a quarter of a century, WNYC host John Schaefer has been presenting New Sounds Live, a series of live music events held in such locations as Merkin Concert Hall and the World Financial Center, featuring an eclectic lineup of musicians that has ranged from Ryuchi Sakamoto, Kitka, and David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir to One Ring Zero with authors Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt, and Rick Moody. As part of the festival, Schaefer has been curating the New Sounds Live Silent Film Series, in which individuals or groups play live, original scores to silent classics in the WFC Winter Garden. Past years have paired the Club Foot Orchestra with THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (Rupert Julian, 1925), the Cinematic Orchestra with MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (Dziga Vertov, 1929), the BQE Ensemble with THE GOLEM (Paul Wegener, 1920), and, last year, Lori Goldston, Wayne Horvitz, and Robin Holcomb with three Yasujio Ozu films. This year Schaefer has enlisted the Alloy Orchestra — keyboardist Roger Miller (Mission of Burma) with multi-instrumentalists Terry Donahue and Ken Winokur — to perform their scores to Buster Keaton’s ONE WEEK (1920), Fatty Arbuckle’s BACK STAGE (1919), and Charlie Chaplin’s EASY STREET (1917) on February 2, Harold Lloyd’s SPEEDY (1928) on February 3, and Douglas Fairbanks’s THE BLACK PIRATE (1926) on February 4. Schaefer discussed the series and more in the latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: How did you decide on the specific films that are included in this year’s New Sounds Live Silent Film Series program?

Buster Keaton’s 1920 classic ONE WEEK should bring the house down February 2 at the World Financial Center

John Schaefer: Well, there’s a lot to be said for the Principle of Restricted Choice. In this case, there were several things we wanted to do: One was a series of lighter works, more comic films than the Yasujiro Ozu movies we presented last year. And we also didn’t want to repeat films we’d shown before. Alloy has quite a film repertoire at its disposal, but we’ve worked with them several times over the years so there were a number of films we’d already done. The Harold Lloyd seemed a no-brainer, especially given its New York-centric storyline. And the score that Alloy did for that movie is smart and catchy — an important factor for a series that features live music. The Douglas Fairbanks film, probably best known for the scene where Fairbanks slides down a ship’s mainsail by holding on to a knife that is ripping into the fabric, is not a comedy but it is so over-the-top that you can hardly watch it without grinning — a quality reflected in Alloy’s score, by the way. And the collection of shorts gave us the opportunity to present three of the enduring geniuses of cinema comedy in one fell swoop. That’s what we’ll start the series with, on Wednesday the 2nd.

twi-ny: There are several piano players and groups that specialize in playing live to silent films. What does the Alloy Orchestra bring to these silent films that is different from other accompanists?

JS: The main thing they bring is their Rack of Junk — a ton (and I think I mean that literally) of percussive and other noise-making gear that augments the keyboards, clarinet, accordion, and other instruments that the three musicians also play. Also, this series of films with live music has always focused on music that does not sound like traditional movie-score material. Alloy doesn’t go in for “period pieces”; they create genuinely new music for these old films. As a result, the films seem less like period pieces themselves and more like a still-living art form.

twi-ny: You are the host of WNYC’s “New Sounds” and “Soundcheck,” for which you also write a blog nearly every day, covering a wide range of topics from across the musical spectrum. How has the internet changed the relationship between you and your listeners?

JS: The biggest change since the internet came along is to make communication with the listeners much easier. We get comments every day on “Soundcheck,” many of which we read on the air; “New Sounds” listeners can access web-only content; Facebook and Twitter allow us to keep our audience up to speed on live events (like these films), special guests, etc. And the ability to archive audio is a huge boost; especially with a show that isn’t in prime listening hours. Now, if you don’t want to stay up till midnight, you can still hear “New Sounds” — and hear it anytime you like. And even after all these years, I feel like the digital communication with our listeners is still growing up, unsure of what it’s eventually going to be. For example, we have a sizable treasure trove of videos of live in-studio performances on “Soundcheck,” and at some point we’re gonna figure out how best to organize these things in a way that allows people to easily find and use them. The internet has already made it so much easier to access information about the shows, the music, and more, but there are lots of other ways in which it can and will deepen the audience’s experience, and that’s a real major area of growth for us.

TWI-NY TALK: HARRISON GREENBAUM



NEW YEAR’S EVE SPECTACULAR
Carolines on Broadway
1626 Broadway between 49th & 50th Sts.
Friday, December 31, 7:30 ($38.25) & 10:00 ($87)
212-757-4100
www.carolines.com
www.harrisongreenbaum.com

Harrison Greenbaum is not your standard stand-up. The New York native, who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, adds a bit of magic to his comedy routines, which began at the Underground Lounge on West End Ave. in 2006, soon included appearances at the New York Underground Comedy Festival and the Boston Comedy Festival, and recently earned him the 2010 Andy Kaufman Award. Last year on December 31, Greenbaum cohosted the official international Times Square New Year’s Eve ball-drop webcast. This New Year’s Eve he’ll be back in Times Square, part of what Carolines on Broadway is calling “the Funniest Party in the Universe.” The night of comedy features Greenbaum along with Vince August, Nate Bargatze, Kurt Metzger, and Mike Vecchione, with performances at 7:30 and 10:00. (The late show will be followed by a live DJ and dancing.) Greenbaum will also be at Carolines nightly through December 26 as part of the Chosen Ones, a group of Jewish comedians that includes Myq Kaplan, Adam Newman, Josh Spear, and Justin Silver, as well as on New Year’s Day for the Carolines Presents show. Earlier this week Greenbaum magically found some time in his nonstop schedule to answer a few questions exclusively for twi-ny.

twi-ny: Do you adapt your regular show for New Year’s Eve? People pay more than usual to be entertained that night, so do they expect more than usual, or are they like any other crowd?

Harrison Greenbaum: As a comic, I always try to incorporate the audience and the surroundings, so I definitely think all of the excitement and craziness of New Year’s Eve will become a part of the show. I do think the audiences on New Year’s Eve might expect a little more than your standard audience — it’s a special occasion, so it should be a special show. I definitely want to ensure that everyone in the audience starts off 2011 with a huge bang and a lot of laughter.

Andy Kaufman Award winner Harrison Greenbaum will celebrate New Year’s Eve with a mix of comedy and magic at Carolines in Times Square (photo by Kyle Buzby)

twi-ny: The bill also includes Vince August, Nate Bargatze, Kurt Metzger, and Mike Vecchione. Care to share any insight about any of your fellow performers? You’re the only one who has won the Andy Kaufman Award, which is pretty cool.

HG: It’s honestly a huge honor to be on the show with such great comedians. These guys are some of the best performers in the country, and it’s a privilege to call all of these guys my friends. Working with guys of this caliber definitely forces you to up your game, so I’m looking forward to a really amazing show. (And thanks for mentioning the Andy Kaufman Award. It was such a huge honor and I’m so proud to be a part of Andy’s incredible legacy. I definitely hope to bring some of the creative and off-the-wall energy Andy had to the stage at Carolines this New Year’s.)

twi-ny: You’re a native New Yorker performing on New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Don’t you know that real New Yorkers avoid Times Square like the plague on New Year’s Eve?

HG: I used to joke with my friends that the only way you’d catch me in Times Square for New Year’s Eve was as the host of a live broadcast of the ball drop. Well, last year, that’s exactly what happened: I ended up cohosting the Times Square New Year’s Eve Worldwide Webcast, a six-and-a-half-hour live broadcast of the ball drop viewed by over 250 million people around the world. I have to say that now, having been to the ball drop in person, I finally understand why so many people come to Times Square. It’s definitely cold and it’s definitely crammed full of people (over a million people come out to Times Square each year), but nowhere else can you feel such an amazing positive energy coming from so many people at the same time. So, yes, I’m a native New Yorker, and, yes, I definitely used to avoid Times Square as much as possible on December 31, but now that I’ve actually experienced it, I have totally changed my tune. So, in all honesty, I’m really looking forward to being in Times Square this New Year’s. (Plus, Carolines is one of my favorite places in the world to be on any day, so why wouldn’t I want to be there to ring in 2011?)

TWI-NY TALK AND SIGNED BOOK GIVEAWAY: PAT COOPER

Pat Cooper signs copies of his memoir at book warming party at Friars Club earlier this month (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Monday, November 15, TGI Friday’s, Penn Station, 2 Penn Plaza, Amtrak level, 5:00
Tuesday, November 16, Borders, 10 Columbus Circle, 7:00
Wednesday, November 17, TGI Friday’s, 34 Union Sq. East, 5:00
Friday, November 19, TGI Friday’s, Penn Station, 1 Penn Plaza, LIRR level, 5:00
Saturday, November 20, Uncle Vinnie’s Comedy Club, 168 New Dorp Ln., Staten Island, $35-$75, 8:00
www.patcooper.com
www.squareonepublishers.com

Born in Brooklyn to Italian immigrant parents, young Pasquale Caputo was expected to become a seventh-generation bricklayer. Instead, he took his chances onstage, where he tried not to lay bricks. Becoming a comic while still a kid, he eventually changed his name to Pat Cooper and ultimately turned into a comedian’s comedian who is not afraid to take on the system. “He has this fantastic capacity to challenge the art form, and has done so with an exquisite approach to the human condition,” Jerry Lewis writes in the foreword to Cooper’s intimate, revealing, and extremely funny memoir, HOW DARE YOU SAY HOW DARE ME! (Square One, November 15, $24.95). The book identifies Cooper’s roots in Red Hook, then traces his path from a rather brief flirtation with the military to his wild experiences in the Borscht Belt and Vegas, telling it like it is, four-letter words and all. The smooth, breezy narrative feels as if Cooper is in the room reading the book to you; in fact, he told the story to his friend and promoter, Steve Garrin, a recording engineer and producer who founded the VoiceWorks voiceover workshop. Writer Richard Herschlag then set it down on the printed page.

On November 3, Cooper launched the book with a boisterous party at the Friars Club that spilled out of the Milton Berle Room and into the Lucille Ball Room. Cooper received tributes from dean Freddie Roman, radio host Lionel, and fellow comedian Jackie “the Joke Man” Martling. Others in attendance included Marilyn Michaels, Joe Franklin, and ninety-six-year-old Professor Irwin Corey, who makes the spry eighty-one-year-old Cooper look like a spring chicken. When Cooper took the podium, he opened with schtick befitting the man whose latest DVD is entitled YOU’RE ALWAYS YELLING!, but he soon revealed his kinder, gentler side, which shows through in the book as well.

“To me, all the years that I’ve been in this business, and to get those kinds of accolades after writing a book, I was mostly in shock because I don’t expect it, I don’t look for it, and when it comes, it’s like a bonus that you never expected,” a humbled Cooper told twi-ny a few days later. “A lot of these people who were very kind to me I don’t know personally, and I was in shock again to think that’s what they thought about me, which is just an extra bonus. So, you know, you go down the road and you say you’re very fortunate, and I just hope this book says something, and I think the word is, and my friends who read the book said, it’s the word dignity, and I hope that’s what I put across. At least people will say, ‘Well, if I didn’t like the book, it had some dignity in it.’”

Cooper will be all over New York City next week, sitting in with Opie & Anthony, Alan Colmes, and Joy Behar and holding signings at several TGI Friday’s restaurants and the Borders in Columbus Circle; he will also be performing stand-up at Uncle Vinnie’s Comedy Club in Staten Island. He’ll be back on December 12 at Di Palo Selects in Little Italy, followed by the highly anticipated “An Evening with Pat Cooper” January 25 at the 92nd St. Y. His appearance at the Y should only lend more credence to those who are sure that Cooper is actually Jewish. “They believed that the skinny kid with the horn-rimmed glasses davened in the morning, did his routines on garlic and saints at night, and said the Shema before going to bed,” he writes in the book. “He was circumcised, not baptized. He was bar mitzvahed, not given Holy Communion. He dropped out of law school, not trade school.”

To enter to win a signed copy of HOW DARE YOU SAY HOW DARE ME!, send your name and daytime phone number to contest@twi-ny.com no later than Tuesday, November 16, at 12 noon. All entrants must be at least twenty-one years of age. One winner will be chosen at random. Good luck!

TWI-NY TALK: MARLO THOMAS

Marlo Thomas will be at the Lincoln Triangle B&N on November 4 to sign copies of her latest book

Barnes & Noble Lincoln Triangle
1972 Broadway at 66th St.
Thursday, November 4, free, 7:30
212-595-6859
www.marlothomas.aol.com
www.hyperioncatalogs.com

In the first chapter of her entertaining memoir, GROWING UP LAUGHING: MY STORY AND THE STORY OF FUNNY (Hyperion, September 2010, $26.99), Marlo Thomas writes about how her family “celebrated everything.” The book itself is a celebration as well: of her life and career; of her father, famous actor and comedian Danny Thomas; and of comedy in general. The star of the early feminist television series THAT GIRL and the creator of FREE TO BE . . . YOU AND ME, which has helped raise several generations of children by teaching kids and parents about compassion, individuality, tolerance, friendship, and the value of family, Thomas has been one of America’s genuine sweethearts for some fifty years. In the book, Thomas, who has been married to talk-show legend Phil Donahue for thirty years, alternates between personal chapters and interviews about comedy with some of her famous friends, including Don Rickles, Tina Fey, Conan O’Brien, Kathy Griffin, Stephen Colbert, Elaine May, Alan Alda, Whoopi Goldberg, and Chris Rock, who all help tell the “story of funny.” Thomas recently talked with twi-ny about the book and her career as she continued her whirlwind promotional tour, which brings her to the B&N at Lincoln Triangle on November 4 at 7:30 for a reading, discussion, and signing.

twi-ny: You’re used to being the one interviewed, but in your new book, you interview some of your favorite comics, including Jerry Seinfeld, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Joan Rivers, and Lily Tomlin. How does it feel to be on the other side of the table, asking the questions?

Marlo Thomas: It was a lot harder and actually more interesting than I expected. I’m certainly familiar with the interview dynamic, having sat for so many of them throughout the years; and because many of my interview subjects in the book were already friends of mine, I instantly felt comfortable with them. But what I learned quickly was how important it is to thoroughly prepare going into an interview — even with someone you think you know. I read their books, watched their specials, even though I’d seen many of them before, so that when we sat down to talk I had a lot of background in my head, not just a lot of questions — which I think makes for a better conversation and leads to a better interview. It was also challenging for me to keep guiding the conversation to where the funny was.

These are interesting people that are great to talk with on a variety of subjects, but since the book is about laughter I had to stay on topic. Luckily, all of my subjects are famously funny people, so they enjoyed exploring the area. But I know I’ll never again sit for an interview without being acutely aware of the hard work that’s going on on the other side of the table.

twi-ny: You write that GROWING UP LAUGHING is your “first and only memoir,” implying that this public examination of your life is not something you’ll be doing again. Was it difficult to open up about your life and share so much of yourself?

MT: I’ve always believed that unless you’re one of those people who have lived more than one kind of life — like Ted Turner or Grace Kelly — or unless you live to an unusually old age — like George Burns — one memoir is pretty much all you need to tell a life story. And as I say in my prologue to GROWING UP LAUGHING, the stories I tell in the book have been humming in my head all my life, so I feel wonderfully satisfied at having written them down at last.

But the life of an entertainer or any public person is no different from anyone else’s in that we’ve all lived through experiences that are painful or difficult or simply sad to recall, and so it was occasionally challenging for me to relive some of those moments in my book — particularly the death of my father. But as in acting, I wanted to create as complete and honest a picture as I could of my “character” — which in this case happened to be the real me. Fortunately, the concept for the book permitted me to take a break from my own story from time to time and explore the lives of these wonderful comedians and get some great laughs along the way.

twi-ny: In addition to being about your life and your family, your book is about comedy in general. How do you think the state of comedy has changed, if at all, since your father’s heyday? And if it has changed, is it for the better?

MT: Comedy is always changing as times and taboos change but what doesn’t change is how important laughter is to our lives. It can be a release of tensions. It can be a healing from pain. And nothing brings people together better than laughter. It is deliciously contagious. When I asked Jerry Seinfeld about all the different styles of comedy and how it changes from generation to generation, he likened it to a perfume counter at a department store — different people like different smells, and that’s what makes comedy so personal. Chris Rock told me that he can sit at the computer for hours on end watching clips on YouTube of legendary comics from all eras — from Lenny Bruce to Richard Pryor. To me, that says it all about the timelessness — and durability — of laughter.