Patton Oswalt Dicusses His Life and Career

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Our next guest may not dance but he has done it all in Hollywood. Patton Oswalt is best known for playing Spencer Olchin in the “CBS” sitcom “The King of Queens” and for lending his voice to cartoon characters. His stand-up comedy show “Annihilation” nominated for an Emmy Award is touring the U.K. and the U.S. this summer. And it’s a lesson in heroism in the face of adversity. He spoke to our Hari Sreenivasan about his career and healing grief with laughter.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, CONTRIBUTOR: So while you’re not doing stand-up, you’re on, I don’t know, six, seven T.V. shows, a movie or two.

PATTON OSWALT, ACTOR: I think so, yes. I’ve got a movie coming out. That was animated. Secret Life of Pets 2, I did voiceover for it. So that was a little more manageable than all the T.V. shows that I was doing.

SREENIVASAN: That’s still acting.

OSWALT: It’s still very — yeah, it’s very active, but at least I didn’t have to get into make-up and, you know, get into costume. I could show up in sweatpants so that’s good.

SREENIVASAN: Is that why most of Hollywood love the voiceover gig? They just stay in sweatpants.

OSWALT: Voiceover is such a relief from the, OK, make sure you’re camera ready, make sure you’re wired, make sure you’re miked or is our costume correct? Voiceover is more, OK, are we in the character? Good, let’s go.

SREENIVASAN: Let’s take a look at a clip from that.

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CAT: First time here?

MAX: Yeah.

CAT: Oh, Dr. Francis is the best veterinarian in the business. You’re going to love him. He specializes in behavioral disorders.

MAX: Behavioral disorders?

CAT: Yeah.

MAX: But I don’t have a behavioral disorder. I mean, I worry a little, sure, but it’s a — it’s a dangerous world. You’d be crazy not to — to worry.

CAT: Yeah, I’m fine too. It’s my human that’s nuts. I mean, you know, I — I bring her a dead bird and she throws it out. I bring her a dead mouse, right in the garbage. Is nothing I do good enough for you, mother?

MAX: Okay.

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SREENIVASAN: It’s an interesting premise.

OSWALT: Yes, I mean well, it’s especially interesting in that it’s an animated movie where it’s such a strong ensemble. It’s not just the one character. I mean, obviously, I have a whole story where my character goes to a farm, which you would think he would be very excited but then Kevin Hart is amazing in it, his bunny character.

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SNOWBALL: I’m going to be the first bunny with washboard abs.

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OSWALT: Jenny Slate.

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GIDGET: Any plans today?

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OSWALT: Eric Stonestreet.

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DUKE: We’re going on a trip.

MAX: Really?

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OSWALT: Harrison Ford, his first voiceover role.

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MAX: Really?

ROOSTER: Are you scared?

MAX: No, I’m not.

ROOSTER: Now, you’re talking.

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SREENIVASAN: You’re not standing in a room together.

OSWALT: No, I wish.

SREENIVASAN: You’re doing it at different times.

OSWALT: I’m not — I was not in a room with Harrison Ford. We were, you know, doing — the director was in France so we were on — I was on Skype with him and then Harrison did his. So, everyone, it’s all technology. Everybody can be everywhere and you can assemble them for an animated film.

SREENIVASAN: That’s cool.

OSWALT: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: You are also — you just finished up a second season of “A.P. Bio”. That’s a show on NBC.

OSWALT: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: You did “Word Girl” on the one end. You did “Archer” on maybe the other end. You’ve got now “Happy.”

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HAPPY: How do I get one of these?

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SREENIVASAN: You’re an animated horse?

OSWALT: I’m an animated —

SREENIVASAN: Flying horse?

OSWALT: — unicorn Pegasus imaginary friend, a blue horse. I mean not that I’m going to compare “Word Girl” with “Happy” because they’re not the same thing. But performance-wise, you are playing these very, no pun intended, cartoonishly big kind of no boundaries style characters so you have to bring the same thing to both of those. I don’t really think of it in terms of, oh, well, this is a kiddy show and this is an adult show. I want to serve whatever the material is, you know, do the best thing I can with it. And there were really, really funny, cool, hidden things on “Word Girl” and there’s very heartfelt, sweet stuff on “Happy.”

SREENIVASAN: You’re also a comic book and sci-fi fiend on a significant level.

OSWALT: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: When did that start?

OSWALT: When I was a little, little kid, I liked superheroes and science fiction but it wasn’t until high school when it was like the one-two punch of discovering Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” and Harvey Pekar’s “American Splendor” that I really felt like there was a whole other form of literature that’s being reborn or at least being reinterpreted. And that felt really — because I remember, you know, at the time, I was studying poets like you would read T.S. Elliot and James Joyce and you were taught that at the time this was a revolutionary thing that when it dropped, when “The Wasteland” appeared, literature was not the same afterward, when Howell appeared in the ’60s. So I had never been able to be alive and experience a thing that appears and then changes the form of something. So seeing that in what people assume was a very disposable art form, comic books, was very exciting to me. That suddenly these multilevel, darker interpretations were being put on a cartoon character like Batman was really exciting to see. And then also to see the form of comic books being used to tell these very every day, non- heroic stories the way that Harvey Pekar was doing it was also incredible for me.

SREENIVASAN: Yes. There is a — I remember there’s an outtake that you had at “Parks and Rec” where you did an improv and it’s like 4 million views on YouTube already but you just go — I’m assuming it was improv because nobody else could have written whatever came out of your mouth.

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OSWALT: Please allow me to finish this because it’s going to seem like a bit of a jump. We see Thanos who was the villain teased at the end of the first Avengers Movie. Now, Thanos, as you know, owns the infinity gauntlet, which has the time gem, the mind gem, the power gem, the space gem, and the reality gem.

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SREENIVASAN: That’s just the stuff that’s going around in your head, floating around. Like you actually just —

OSWALT: I think that —

SREENIVASAN: — know enough about Marvel and D.C. and the Avengers and everything elsewhere —

OSWALT: Yes. But I think that’s floating around in everyone’s head on some level or another. We use stories, whether they’re false, you know. And when I say false, I mean fictional like a myth or a heroic story, an epic, a comic book, or even the stories that I think, like a sports fan will put on their team or a certain player’s journey that they love, that you know, that kind of heroic rise, fall and rise over and over again. I think we use those to make sense of everyday life and everyday pressures where you feel so unheroic a lot of days, going, I am being ground down by the pressure of having to get my car fixed and you want to feel like, well, I could face the pressure of having to save the universe but it’s the day- to-day stuff that actually — that we overcome that makes us heroic.

SREENIVASAN: Why do stand-up? I mean, you’ve got enough work to keep you busy. What makes you go back to —

OSWALT: Because stand-up is so much fun. It’s so much fun. I love the form. I love the hang. I love working with other comedians. I love the fact that it is the — I think one of the last no committee creative posts left where you — it’s what I think and I go up there and I talk. And I’m not running it by other people. I mean, if I do run it by other people, it’s by other comedians and we’re doing it for fun and riffing off each other and that to me is just constant fun.

SREENIVASAN: I can’t imagine anything that would be more vulnerable than doing stand-up, because when you’re not funny, it’s just you. As you said, there’s no committee. You screwed up. You didn’t make people laugh.

OSWALT: It’s on you.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

OSWALT: Yes. I mean, there is a — but there’s two sides to that because there is a vulnerability to stand-up in that you are up there and it is on you whether it succeeds or fails, but you do have a lot of advantages in that you are on stage, you’re above the audience, there’s a light on you, your voice is amplified. So you are coming at it from — your bets have been hedged a little bit. You know, and you would think that if people have shown up for the show, they want to laugh. They want you to do well. They’re not showing up to go, oh, I hope this guy turfs out and I get to watch. So you have a lot going for you. And then I think that comfort zone is what helps you become more vulnerable and open and honest on stage.

SREENIVASAN: Your last stand-up dealt with some of the current day events and then also some other stuff. Let’s just take a look at a clip from that. “Annihilation” is what it was called on Netflix.

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OSWALT: I’m genuinely surprised you’re in such a good mood, especially with what — I’m sure you guys saw what just went down on Twitter five minutes ago. Did you — you didn’t see? No? I’m kidding. Nothing happened. But that’s — that’s the world we’re living in right now, basically. Every — oh, [bleep], what did he do? What? What do you mean? I almost feel like I could get out of a mugging using that for the next couple of years. Like, if someone put a gun in my face, give me your wallet, take my keys, man, it’s over, go check Twitter. What? And I just bolt like I could make it to survive.

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SREENIVASAN: It’s true. And that couple of years is still going.

OSWALT: It’s really weird how this thing, Twitter, which was a very fun distraction, now it’s like — it feels like the fate of civilization hangs on Twitter now, which is not what I think it was meant to be.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

OSWALT: You know, Facebook, Twitter, a way to connect us has also refocused us in some really, really bad ways. And I think it’s almost affected the rhythms of conversation and I fear that it’s affected the rhythms of thought and how we approach problems. And you know, it’s why someone like — someone who’s older like an Elizabeth Warren sounds so refreshing because they don’t necessarily have the Twitter syntax in their voice. Like this person sounds like they know what they’re talking about. Well, because they’re not talking in these weird, limited character blips.

SREENIVASAN: There’s a kind of now-famous episode where somebody who wrote back to you in a harsh way, Michael Beady, you ended up taking a very different tone and response to this. Tell us a little bit about what happened.

OSWALT: Well, this guy, Michael Beady was just writing — I even forgot what he wrote to me. It was something vicious about — because I had said either something about Trump. My first thing was I wrote something back very snarky and then I don’t know why but I looked through his timeline and he was like, oh my God, this guy’s actually facing all these health problems, he’s a veteran. So I said, OK, let’s maybe try to help him out. What I was saying was, like, people like Bernie Sanders and all these people that you hate are actually — they want to make the world better for you so that you can — if you are sick or you are wounded, you can deal with it with some dignity, without having to beg. Like it’s — it’s embarrassing that America has GoFundMes and Indiegogos. America should be run the way like small gangsters run their neighborhoods where they brag about someone’s heat gets cut off in my neighborhood, some little old lady, I take care of that. Like that’s what we should be. We shouldn’t be bragging about the amount of weapons we have or the amount of strength. We should brag about, in our country, GoFundMe had to close its doors because no one needs it anymore because when someone gets sick, we take care — like we have things in place where no one has to go begging.

SREENIVASAN: What were the details of his life that caught your attention?

OSWALT: He was a veteran who was — he had suffered some kind of like health problems with septic shock. It was just really bad and he was, like, he was in a bad way. And I was like, let’s meet his GoFundMe goals so he can live with some dignity. And unfortunately, I’ve seen him since on Twitter the way he responds to people, he’s kind of gone back to his kind of MAGA, which is like, you know, but it was like, it wasn’t so much trying to — yes, I was trying to help him but I was also like maybe the act itself will get signal boosted and other people. And by the way, I was inspired by Sara Silverman basically did the same thing a year before where a guy came after her and then she went through his timeline and said, oh my God, this guy’s back is all messed and there’s no one there to help him. Can anyone like — she just was like, maybe I’m going to try that. So, again, I don’t know if she changed this person’s mind but it was like, her act made me do that and maybe more people will do that.

SREENIVASAN: Yes. One of the things that came out of your “Annihilation” stand-up in Netflix, the last one was you figured out a very strange way to help the audience laugh about a personal tragedy of yours, the passing of your wife.

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OSWALT: Mother’s Day, we’ll be at the airport and we’ll travel and I’ll make that day really fun and I’ll fill that with adventure and I’ll keep her mind off it all day. And we’ll be home and we’ll deal with this all again next year, step by step. So now we’re at the airport, we’re walking up to the security gate, I’m like I think I pulled this off. Here, sweetie here’s your ticket. She loves to hand up her ticket. Here it is. So I go here’s your ticket. She gives the gate lady her ticket. I give the gate lady my ticket. She’s a very old, sweet Polish woman and we’re walking on to the plane just as we’re about to go down the tunnel, her hand falls on my shoulder, and she says, I hear what happened to your wife. She looks at Alice, to your mother, to be without your mother on Mother’s Day, I — my mother died when I was your age. I never get over it. I never — I’m still so sad. My father never got over it. It broke him. He died alone and — but when you are sad, what I tell myself is that also there are so many other sad people.

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SREENIVASAN: There’s a section of that, maybe the last 15, 20 minutes where you could hear a pin drop. It was almost like a bizarre cathartic moment where people are just wondering what’s happening here and the rousing applause you get at the end, rights, it’s — they witnessed something happening.

OSWALT: It was really — well I mean because I think they witnessed me being really, really frightened on stage and being in silence that long for a comedian is really terrifying and not knowing if you’re going to pull out of it. And even though at that point, I had been doing this — the show long enough, that set and that material that I felt like I knew where the laughs were, even though there were long silences. I’m like, well — but there was still a fear in me that when I would get there, doing the show, and with everyone seeing the cameras and everything, I had a fear the audience would go, no, this isn’t cool, I don’t want to watch this and we shouldn’t be laughing at this. Like I still — so I didn’t know that it would work until after it worked. And it was really, really nerve-wracking for me.

SREENIVASAN: Yes. And you were very public about your grieving process or at least there was lots of information that was out there about it. I know that you didn’t obviously grieve completely in public but why did you do that?

OSWALT: Because a lot of the stuff that got me through it were from people that had grieved in public beforehand and they either wrote it down. Or I read C.S. Lewis’s “A Grief Observed.” I was reading a lot of Annie Lamott and those people were brave enough to very much put their grieving out there. Cheryl Strayed was another one. Just whatever shipwreck they found themselves in, they went well, I’m going to do this publicly so maybe someone else can have something. So I kind of did that, like thinking maybe this will help someone else and then did the special the way that I did it thinking, well, down the road, maybe someone else will go through this and they can look at this.

SREENIVASAN: It doesn’t need to be hidden.

OSWALT: No. Yes, I think we hide too much disease and grief so that then when it hits other people, they feel like, well, I’ve never seen this happen so I must be the only person going through this and it feels way more dire than it needs to be. And I was very lucky that I had a — I and Alice had a grief group to go to so we could work through this stuff. It was not easy.

SREENIVASAN: You talk about your daughter, Alice, in the stand-up quite a bit and then other things. What have you learned about dealing with grief watching her go through it? What’s she taught you?

OSWALT: Well, the first thing that I’ve learned was that children are way more resilient than adults. That children bounce back from stuff and turn damage and trauma into positive things way quicker than we do. And I think mainly because they still see the world as new and newer and newer stuff coming on. and I think as you get older, you’re like, well I’ve seen a lot of this before and this grief is going to — I don’t know what new is coming down the pike for me. So —

SREENIVASAN: It sounds like she was helping you more than you being–

OSWALT: She helped me. Again, I remember three days into it or four days into it, we were up all night, we couldn’t sleep, neither of us. And then my daughter, who was, you know, seven at the time, said, when your mom dies, you’re the best memory of her. Everything you do is a memory of her. She said that.

SREENIVASAN: Wow.

OSWALT: And I wrote it down. I ran and I got a piece of paper, I wrote that down. But that was this — and it wasn’t her, like, coming up with something profound out of nowhere. That was something she had been thinking of for days and how do I say this and articulate this. It was amazing to hear that. Like that was a huge help for me because it made me look at her in a different way of, like, you know, this is not this fragile kid that has to — she wants to go and be in the sunlight and experience life in order to assuage the grief of losing her mom. Like the better the life she lives, the better it is for the memory of her mom.

SREENIVASAN: Patton Oswalt, thanks so much for joining us.

OSWALT: Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it.

SREENIVASAN: Thank you.

OSWALT: Yep.