Talk: Anderson says comedy is serious

Celebrated comic Louie Anderson performs this weekend at Pittsburgh’s renowned Improv comedy… Celebrated comic Louie Anderson performs this weekend at Pittsburgh’s renowned Improv comedy club. Anderson took a few minutes out of his busy schedule on Wednesday night to speak with Pitt News columnist Michael Darling about college, the serious side of comedy, and his long-standing friendship with Pitt professor Carl Kurlander, with whom he collaborated on his newest book, “The F Word: How To Survive Your Family”.

Hollywood is notoriously responsible for ruining many great friendships — Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary, to name one recent example. What is it that has allowed your friendship with Carl Kurlander to not only survive, but flourish?

Like any friendship, there has to be a commitment in order for any relationship to survive. It’s been an interesting road with Carl because I’m a writer and a comic. Comics are writers, Carl is a writer, and he also did comedy. The main thing is that if I’m a great comic or a good comic or whatever — I’ve been successful, let’s say that — I’ve met very few people who are as smart, clever, and creative as Carl Kurlander. And where he comes from in his writing, I’ve come from in my comedy.

At the end of the day, we are both trying to help people survive this experience of life. And to say that each individual’s story is important, whether it be mine or his or a student or any people in his life or family, trying to recognize the humanity in people along with being an artist and telling a story — that’s what both of our goals are.

The way we survive that friendship is that we never competed. It wasn’t about who was working more or better. I never met a guy who was smarter about story structure than Carl. He can take any story and tell you what’s wrong. He can do a much more important thing and tell you what’s right with it. And both of those things are great.

He gets very busy, but if you get his ear, he’ll put down anything in order to help people work on their story, and I was privileged and honored to work with him. We’re great friends with an equal amount of foibles.

You’re a man with a very well-known “serious” side to you. What is it that you think makes people like you want to be comedians?

I think there are two kinds of comedians: Those who want to be and those who kind of fall into it. Comedy comes from the ability to make light out of something that’s dark. That’s the ability that great comics have. If somebody is going through a tragedy, you know people are dealing with that tragedy when the jokes start. That’s just how people cope. Otherwise, the enormity of the tragedy would be unbearable.

It’s a pinprick in the expanding bubble that needs to be deflated. That’s what comedy does. And I could never be a great comic unless I was able to look at all the darker stuff. I couldn’t be as funny as I am if I haven’t explored that. I think all comics are serious to some degree and their job is to lighten up that darker stuff.

Many of today’s greatest comics, Rock, Pryor, Allen, and yourself, never attended college. Are there any benefits for an aspiring comic to go to college?

Comics’ brains don’t work in the same way that other people’s brains work. Comics go to college on some level because of the amount of stuff they read, but I don’t think they fit within most social situations, and that’s why college doesn’t appeal to them. I don’t think that comics have much social ability. Comics feel most comfortable when they’re on stage.

What do you say to aspiring comedians who are in college?

If you’re going to go to college, study a career you can tolerate if you have no intention of doing it, anyway. Get a degree in something you know you can do a job at. If comedy or art is your choice, but you don’t want to starve, that’s why I suggest that.

The advice I have for comedy is really simple. It’s the only profession and the only art that you can’t practice unless you’re doing it live in front of people. You can learn to play guitar and sing songs in the dark. You can be a great dancer in a dance class. You can become a great writer by writing and writing, but with comedy, the only place you can learn it is by doing it.

Is there a question you’ve never been asked that you would like to answer or anything important you’ve learned that you feel like sharing?

People should know that whatever you decide to do in your life, you really have to be passionate and single-minded. Second, you cannot wait long enough to become successful. The longer you wait before your success hits, the more prepared you’ll be for that success.

The hardest thing is that we live in a world in which Paris Hilton is famous. It’s very confusing to know how to become famous. People do what they want to do and it gives them great joy. Fame and money and success will all follow. But true joy, opening and living through your heart, that will give you something that is sustainable forever. It’s the hardest thing to do, but it’s the only thing to do.

Is that how you define true happiness?

The closest you can get to living through your heart is what true happiness is. Your ‘juice’ as an entertainer has to come from within. It’s nice to have money, don’t get me wrong, and it’s nice to have success, but it’s most important at the end of the day to be fulfilled from the thing that you love to do.

Always remember: All that you have in life has been given to you for a reason. Fame should be measured by you and not from the environment you live in. When I hear something I did matters to someone, whether it’s something ten years ago like “Life With Louie,” it means that everything I do is important in some way, that something I did from my heart hit a bull’s-eye. That’s true fame.