Issue #108 – Digital Cover Paul Reiser

Published on January 11th, 2018 | by Darren Paltrowitz

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Paul Reiser On His Work Within “Stranger Things 2,” “There’s… Johnny!” and more

Simply put, Paul Reiser has had a lot of success over the past 35 years. On television, he was the star and co-creator of Mad About You, one of the most successful sitcoms of all time. Within the film world, he had starring roles include Diner and Aliens. He has written a few best-selling books, like Couplehood and Familyhood. Reiser has also done well as a stand-up comic — which he did before his breakout role in Diner — and a producer, beyond also working on a variety of musical projects; he played piano on “Final Frontier,” the Mad About You theme song.

2017 has been a banner year of sorts for Reiser. He has been a part of three acclaimed Internet-based shows, Stranger Things 2There’s… Johnny! and Red OaksAs learned during my phone chat with Reiser, this was not by design, as There’s… Johnny! had been in development for over a decade. Reiser was both hilarious and honest during our chat, able to answer questions directly while still working in great quips. More on Paul Reiser can be found online at www.paulreiser.com.

You grew up in Manhattan right?

Paul Reiser: I did.

Did you ever live in Queens? I’ve heard people talk about you going to Queens College.

Paul Reiser: I did not go to Queens College. Jerry Seinfeld went to Queens College. I know a lot of people but I never did.

When exactly did you move out west to L.A.?

Paul Reiser: I moved out west in the beginning of ‘83, so I have now officially been west coast longer than I was on the east coast, which is a startling realization.

Did you ever come back here in terms of living? Or did you ever keep a place in New York?

Paul Reiser: I kept a place for a couple of years until the infamous “city of New York versus me” case, because I had an apartment that I believe was $14 a month. It was a very reasonable rent and I kept if for a while, and then they said, “Iou don’t really live here, do you?” I went, “Well you found me out.” But so, yes, I never moved back but I am there all the time. I go back frequently and I like that my kids who were born in L.A., somehow think of themselves as roughly New York kids, which makes me proud.

Is there anything you miss about living in New York?

Paul Reiser: Oh yeah, lots. I miss weather, I miss wearing sweaters… When you land in New York it feels different, it smells different, It moves differently, it is quicker… it is more hands-on, you feel people. Here in L.A., you are just not out as much among people, parking next to other people. In L.A. you jump into what is like just a huge busy mosh pit.

The first mosh pit reference of the day. Something that I find interesting that I am not sure has come up in interviews before, but The Paul Reiser Show was largely about you finding something to do. Just in the past year and change, you have popped on three different shows that are all on different internet networks. Is it kind of a coincidence that there is this big burst of projects from you coming at one time?

Paul Reiser: It is mostly coincidence because I have been working on things and developing things. There is three things that came out, it was coincidental that they all came out. I mean, There’s… Johnny!, I created and started working on it 12 years ago and it just took a long time, for various reasons. We happened to make it this year and we got it out, and they happened to release it really closely to the release of Strangers Things and Red Oaks, so that had nothing to do with me. So it looks like I am quite clever but it really just happened to work out that way.

I remember reading that There’s… Johnny! was first attached to SeeSo. Was that the case?

Paul Reiser: Yes, SeeSo bought it and developed it… I kind of liked the idea that they were new and sort of a start-up and we were there, and if things had gone to plan we would have been the big breakout show for them… I liked that it was a comedy hub and the idea of being their big fish in a small pond and hopefully helping them to find who they were was appealing to me. As luck would have it, right after we premiered the show with the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in April, they starting making cuts… It was a very interesting position that I had never been in before where the show is done and there is nobody standing to put it out.

But to their credit, NBC Comcast was very supportive and they are very appreciative of the fact, they knew what they had and they knew it was. They knew the show was good and they knew… we also were sort of the temporary guardians of Johnny’s legacy, so it was something that they understood and knew that they couldn’t just let die on the vine. So they were diligent in finding a home for it and Hulu was a perfect place.

Being on three different shows on three different networks or providers, does the internet play a lot into other facets of your life?

Paul Reiser: Well, sure. I mean you would be hard-pressed to not have it be a part of your life. It is pervasive in every part of everybody’s life now, whether you know it or not. But you know when you are making the shows, you don’t make a show any differently for Amazon or Netflix than you do for NBC or Paramount. You are making a film, you are making content and certainly Stranger Things, it was like making a major motion picture every week. I mean they were huge. When we did There’s… Johnny!, it was odd because it felt so comfortably retro… You were already a TV show because you were on the set of The Tonight Show basically, so it was a very head trippy kind of thing. So the technology where these shows actually air or are seen doesn’t really affect what you write or what you do. It is just people watching in different ways.

You just brought up a very interesting point that the three shows…

Paul Reiser: Well, I’m a very interesting guy. (laughs)

(laughs) There’s… Johnny! is decades ago, Stranger Things takes place in the 80s, and Red Oaks is also in the 80s. Being in shows like that take place in prior decades, does that make you nostalgic at all for the past? 

Paul Reiser: No, not particularly no. There’s… Johnny! had a feel when you were there and it was, to me it felt very much of a time period, the others didn’t as much. You know I mean? Stranger Things when you see it, it has the feel of an 80s movie by design, that was their love and that is what the Duffer Brothers were aiming for in a sort of a valentine to the movies that they grew up on… It just is a little retro for being certainly 80s, but you know it is science fiction. It need not be an 80 vibe.

Red Oaks, you get some wardrobe that makes you feel like, “Oh right, this is right that they used to wear this.” But no I didn’t feel particularly nostalgic, and it is really coincidental that they all happen to be set in the past. I don’t usually think of writing things in the past… I mean I enjoy looking back. The Carson years, those were the years. When we were writing it, we were looking through all the archives and all the Tonight Show footage of that period. That was a bit of a trip because a lot of the shows, I hadn’t seen famous moments since they first aired, having a jolt like “I remember, I remember.”

That feeling also, for me as a kid who loved comedy I don’t think I was planning to be in comedy, but watching, they brought me back to, “Oh yeah, staying up late.” It was on at 11:30 and you couldn’t tape it and watch it the next day at your convenience. You had to watch it at 11:30 and the guy you wanted didn’t come out till 12:10 and so you had to stay up on a school night to watch George Carlin come out, so that was a little bit of trip down memory lane watching the footage.

But what was really fun and I think what makes There’s… Johnny! work… there are people who are enjoying the nostalgia and enjoying seeing a nice taste, a dollop of Johnny. It is not about Johnny, but he is in there and it brings you back, just seeing him. He has been off the air 25 years, so just seeing him puts you in the mind, whatever your recollection is. But the story, again, the story could be right now, you know? It is two young people, they are finding themselves in this very busy chaotic environment. So it certainly could be done today, those stories are not anything that are solely 70s.

Do you have the bug to produce more stuff for Nuance Productions?

Paul Reiser: Yeah. Before the last couple of years that is kind of all I was doing and some things go and some things don’t go. I really like that part, I like writing and I like bringing it to life, so it was great. Stranger Things, it is great to be invited to jump into an ensemble where the directors and the creators are geniuses and you just show up and you jump in. Red Oaks, it was Steven Soderbergh and Greg Jacobs, these are very capable filmmakers and they wrote these great parts. It is great to go play in their sandbox.

But I kind of really loved There’s… Johnny!. It is like we got to write it and create it and cast it and I enjoyed not being on-camera. It is fun to sort of move the chess pieces around and make this thing come to life and you know we got so many talented people that came on-board, which was really a testament to what we were trying to do. Everybody came on-board, it was a relatively small-scale show. To have Tony Danza and Jane Levy and David Gordon Green and all these really terrific behind the scenes people jumping in and making it something special was very gratifying.

That character that you played on Red Oaks, the country club president, was that something that you did research for? Or did you base that off of anyone you knew?

Paul Reiser: No, it wasn’t really about, I never had been in a country club. I never have been in that world but they wrote a great role and you show up and there it is and there is a country club. You don’t have to imagine that much when you see these other great actors that you are playing with. But there was a sense of this, certain people that I knew… From that period or even now, that sense of entitlement and that sort of guy who loves to be the big fish in the little pond throwing his weight around, when it is very clear that he has pretty limited powers over his own children, over his own fate, over his own company, over the politics and the economics. So as much as he likes to throw his weight around, he was certainly limited and mortal, but I certainly know enough people like that to draw from.

Did you play a lot of tennis before coming into that role?

Paul Reiser: Not really, the great thing is if you get a great editor like they had, it makes you look like you actually play. Although I got people say, “You know what I could tell you that none of those shots cleared than the net.” You don’t see where the ball lands, so for the uninitiated, it looks like I know what I am doing.

So do you have any hobbies outside of work?

Paul Reiser: I don’t have hobbies, I should get hobbies, shouldn’t I?

I mean that is up to you, but sometimes…

Paul Reiser: It is up to you, you are growing up. Now I feel like I should have a hobby.

I asked that for a reason because somebody who is a creative mind like you, who is working on a lot of different projects, sometimes they say that “My work and my family, that is all I have time for and that is all I want to work on.” Other people, somebody like Robert Klein with his blues band, you know that is really what he wants to be doing.

Paul Reiser: I have always played music and I will, but I don’t actually want to call it a hobby. It is just something that I have always been doing since forever and I play piano and I sometimes write, but I have enough things, it is enough. I don’t have a burning hankering to add stuff to my life. I do have a bunch of things that I am writing and working on and there is always something else that I want to get going and that is invigorating.

I feel very fortunate to do something like wake up and, “ooh I want to do this,” “I kind of want to see where that story goes,” “that thing that I put away six years ago, I still want to make that”… There is a couple of things that I am working on now, like There’s… Johnny! was something we kept trying to make and we waited for the Carson family to come on-board. So every three or four years my partner and I go, “Let us call the guy again and let us see what has changed.” Because sometimes they had their reasons why we can’t do it right now. First Johnny passed, well now “we are putting out a DVD collection so it is not the right time” and still have to wait it out. Sometimes I have an idea that doesn’t go away. I really do want to make it and I know we have hit roadblocks, but I am going to try again. So when something actually comes out and it comes out even better than you hoped, it is a gratifying feeling.

If you didn’t have a cooperation from the Johnny Carson estate, would the show have been more like The Larry Sanders Show where it would have been a fictional talk show?

Paul Reiser: I don’t know, I never really entertained that. I felt like that show has been done, you know? I don’t think we need another fake talk show. It is sort of like, the appeal, the general idea from the beginning was behind the scenes of The Tonight Show, because that was a specific thing. I remember as a kid watching and feeling something magical about this show and it looked like that is where it happening. We put the show in ‘72 because that is exactly when Johnny moved the show to California, where it took on an even bigger and more prominent role in American culture. As a kid in New York I am watching like, “Oh that looks like where show business is happening, that is the coolest place to be.” So it was always the idea of let us do a show about behind the scenes.

I think we could have probably done it and called it the “behind the scenes of the Tonight Show“ if we didn’t. I don’t know if we would have needed their cooperation if we didn’t want the clips, but I always felt the clips… When you watch it, it gives it such an authenticity because you go, “Well, these are fictitious people and these are made-up stories,” but there is Johnny so it must be true because he is right there and it’s such a powerful image. There is something so familiar about Johnny. He was in your living rooms and on your TVs for 30 years, so when you see him on there, it has such a wealth of history and connection that without it… The short answer is I never really thought about “let us just make up a fake show” because it has been done.

So finally, Paul, any last words for the kids?

Paul Reiser: Don’t try these tricks at home, that is all I would say. Whatever it is, just don’t try it at home. I don’t know what it means but it seems like a good warning.

The other warning, and I think this is true no matter where you live or when: Take a jacket. That is my one piece of advice, take a jacket because you can always take it off, but you can’t put it on if you don’t have it. You know what I am saying?


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About the Author

Darren Paltrowitz is a New York resident with over 20 years of entertainment industry experience. He began working around the music business as a teenager, interning for the manager of his then-favorite band Superdrag. Since then, he has worked with a wide array of artists including OK Go, They Might Be Giants, Mike Viola, Tracy Bonham, Loudness, Rachael Yamagata, and Amanda Palmer. Darren's writing has appeared in dozens of outlets including the New York Daily News, Inquisitr, The Daily Meal, The Hype Magazine, All Music Guide, Guitar World, TheStreet.com, Businessweek, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, and the Jewish Journal. Beyond being "Editor At Large" for The Hype Magazine, Darren is also the host of weekly "Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz" series, which airs on dozens on television and digital networks. He has also co-authored 2 published books, 2018's "Pocket Change: Your Happy Money" (Book Web Publishing) and 2019's "Good Advice From Professional Wrestling" (6623 Press), and co-hosts the world's only known podcast about David Lee Roth, "The DLR Cast."


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