Paula Poundstone

By Naperville Magazine
September 2024 View more Spotlight

By Jen Banowetz

The multifaceted comic brings her brand of humor to the Mac

Depending on your generation, you might know Paula Poundstone from NPR’s Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me! or as the voice of Forgetter Paula in Pixar’s Inside Out animated movies. Or maybe it’s her weekly podcast, Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone. Regardless, she has a formidable career in comedy stretching back to her 1979 standup debut in Boston. Over the decades, she’s certainly earned her place on Comedy Central’s list of the “100 Best Comics of All Time.”

Poundstone is bringing her observational humor to Glen Ellyn’s McAninch Arts Center (425 Fawell Blvd.) with a show 7:30 p.m. September 14. Ahead of her appearance, we had a chance to catch up with her, though she warned: “I’m notorious for derailing the conversation in interviews into territories that are totally not usable.”

We risked it. While our chat covered everything from the upcoming presidential election to kittens, there was plenty of usable material. Phew.

Q: How would you describe your comedy style?
A: I’ve been doing this job for 45 years. I have 45 years of material rattling around in my head somewhere—I always say to people it looks, I think, up there something like one of those arcade games where you step in a glass booth and whatever money [is blowing around] you can grab in 30 seconds. That’s sort of the inside of my head. So no two nights are the same, which isn’t to say that I don’t repeat material because I do, but if you were to come to see me [at the same place twice], you would see two different shows. Some of the material probably would be the same, but I would say that the majority would not, partly because what happens is, my favorite part of the night is just talking to the audience. I do the time-honored “Where’re you from? What do you do for a living?” And they’ll say something that invariably reminds me of something else, so I use it to set my sails. A lot of times we’ll have a conversation that is wholly unique to that night…It’s just really fun. I have the best audiences in the world, which is why I do two hours without anyone else because I’m just too selfish to share.

Q: Any advice for someone who wants to break into comedy?
A: Comedy is a funny job because the only way to learn to do it is to do it. If I’m learning to be a musician, I can practice in my house all the time every day; I can get really good at it, and then at some point when I feel confident about what I’m doing, I can present myself somehow publicly. Standup comedy, you can’t—it doesn’t work that way. Just doesn’t. There are people who are teaching comedy classes, or that sort of thing, that will try to convince you that it can work that way. I don’t believe that it does…You have to get onstage. And so the answer to that is open mic nights. You put together your five minutes of things that you think are funny—your own things, by the way, that you think are funny—and memorize it and go up and do your five minutes. And you do that over and over again. And maybe occasionally in the club where you’re at, order a juice and sit down and think about what you’ve done. I don’t think there’s a workaround, you know?

Q: What type of venues do you prefer?
A: I love theaters as opposed to clubs. I still work about four music clubs a year, but they’re not comedy clubs, they’re music clubs. And I love them because the people are almost on top of me, and I always feel like I’m working among the notes that were left there by the musicians. But outside of that, I do all theaters. You don’t have to wait for the waitresses to drop the checks. Some places sell alcohol in the lobby, and some people got drunk before they came—and so occasionally you have that, but it’s not nearly at the rate that you had in the other places. It’s really a wonderful night. And I feel like especially now with the world being so upside down, [it’s important] to go someplace and laugh for two hours. I always tell the audience members, “Look, the truth is you never laugh harder than when you’re with some friends.” And you know, it’s not like you have to come see me—although I’d really like it if you did—but, boy, you gotta to make sure that somewhere you’re getting that part of life.

Photo: Michael Schwartz