Paul F. Tompkins Keeps Getting Better
Paul F. Tompkins had his first big break when he joined the writing staff and cast of Mr. Show with Bob and David. He’s also been featured on The Daily Show, Comedy Central Presents, and hosted the VH-1 show, Best Week Ever. More recently he’s become known for his own shows at the Largo in Los Angeles, his Podcast The Pod F. Tompkast, and his stand up appearances around the country. He came to Sirius XM to spend an hour with Ron Bennington on Unmasked recently. What follows are a few excerpts from that interview.
Ron Bennington: So you’re doing terrific and I know the other night you recorded again. Is this another CD?
Paul F. Tompkins: Yes this will be my new CD that will come out next year. I also recorded it as a special which will be a DVD for comedy central and then two months after that comes out I’m allowed to release the CD version. And then we’ll see if that was a huge mistake or not.
Ron Bennington: Because you’re still wondering if there’s an audience for comedy albums after all these years.
Paul F. Tompkins: More so than DVD’s it seems. People would still rather listen to the stuff, which I kind of get. And especially now that you can carry the stuff around with you wherever you go– it’s a great thing. I was talking to somebody about listening to some old Bob Newhart records that I hadn’t heard since I was a kid. And my parents had all the original Bob Newhart albums and I loved him when I was a kid, not even really understanding them. But I was listening to that stuff recently, and I could not believe how well it held up. It’s just him doing these one person sketches…these phone bits. Outside of a very few dated references to like, women drivers, for the most part, they really hold up. Really funny stuff.
Ron Bennington: So you liked comedy albums when you were a kid?
Paul F. Tompkins: I did. I listened to whatever I could get my hands on. Certainly Bill Cosby, being from Philadelphia, where I’m from was a big deal. And Steve Martin was a huge influence; just that silliness. And that was stuff that I absolutely did not get at all. And when I listen to it now and I think, ‘why did I think I didn’t get this?’ I think I completely got it. But it was weird, I read his book on a plane– cross country flight– and it was strange to see, as he was referring to the bits. I didn’t realize that he was doing a sort of anti-comedy thing at the time. Almost like an Andy Kaufman. It was more of a character and more of a “commentary on” than I was aware at the time. It wasn’t until I saw it in black and white that I thought, ‘I had no idea that’s what he was doing.’ He was coming at it from a point of– ‘you know what you think stand up comedy is– and so I’m going to do this joke parody of it.’
Ron Bennington: And you work that way too. You’re well aware that you’re in show business and show business is somewhat worthless.
Paul F. Tompkins: Yes! It’s ridiculous. I love when show business gets so self-important. And when people get too mired in the ‘what we do, is, uh…what we do matters, it really matters to people.’ It’s like yeaaa…it does, but you’re not supposed to say that. You know what I mean? It’s up to the audience to say that thing was very important to me. It’s not for the artist to say that thing was important to you. I remember the year that Julia Roberts won an Oscar. So she’s standing there in front of a jury of her peers, and everybody’s cheering for her. So she’s talking about how much fun it is to act, but then she says, ‘and what we do is so hard– so hard.’ I guess it’s hard if you can’t do it, you know what I mean? If you can’t convincingly pretend to be someone else…that is hard. Absolutely. But compared to…I would say…just about any other job on Earth, it’s not hard.
Ron Bennington: And yet, I think the reason why she is popular, or a Will Smith…is that confidence level that they have. To walk out in front of an audience and honestly believe you’re welcome. You are welcome. Will Smith has an entire family of confident people.
Paul F. Tompkins: What must that feel like!! That must feel so good! That was not my family at all! And we had way more people in my family too. There was eight of us altogether. We were like ‘oh, we are bad at this!’ Just life. Just not good at it.
Ron Bennington: Every member of your family (laughing)?
Paul F. Tompkins: Yea. It was pretty obvious…pretty obvious…
Ron Bennington: …Mom, dad, the kids. We’re not cutting it. Not even as a family? (still laughing)
Paul F. Tompkins: Oh, no. So the idea of me going into show business was like…whhhhaaaaat? Noooo.
Ron Bennington: Well being from Philadelphia, there aren’t a lot of people who are there to help support your dreams. That town really believes that you can’t do this. It’s why Rocky was so funny from the beginning because no one thought he could do it.
Paul F. Tompkins: I saw the movie ‘Invincible.’ Mark Wahlberg, about the guy [Vince Papalle]. I loved it and I didn’t know if other people would get it. There was a guy in the bar who was his friend. And from the moment Vince says I’m going to try out for the team, the guy was like, ‘you can’t do that’. The whole way through this guy would to cut him— almost out of nowhere– ‘nah, you still stink! You can’t do anything!’ So that was perfect. That guy needed to be there.
Ron Bennington: In Philadelphia that was a guidance counselor. This town really doesn’t think they can accomplish a lot. You do have to have a certain amount of belief. Now how are you as a performer? Are you a confident performer?
Paul F. Tompkins: I am a more confident performer now than I ever have been, I think just from having done it for so long. I still have nerves before a show– because it’s still got to be good. But I don’t think I can ever get overconfident, because no matter how long you’ve been doing this, you still don’t know what’s going to happen on stage. You can bring all the ideas you want to how that evening is going to go, but it is not up to you entirely. There is a whole roomful of people that have their own ideas about what they are seeing.
Ron Bennington: That’s the interesting thing too, because they haven’t dedicated the time to this that you have, and yet, they’re the one’s who decide.
Paul F. Tompkins: Yea. We are expecting that this is all taken care of by the time we show up. It’s like, ‘come on guys, give me a chance here!’
Ron Bennington: But with a band I think you can go out and play the hits. You know we’ve all been at the Rolling Stones show that was just okay. But for a comedian, it doesn’t work that way.
Paul F. Tompkins: Musicians are cowards. They know that they are. First of all, they’re hiding behind instruments.
Ron Bennington: Shields….
Paul F. Tompkins: The worst is that drummer all the way back there! He’s got millions of things around him. They have their songs. The song begins and people listen to it, and when its over….even if people don’t like the song, they clap. So there is a politeness that is built into the music business that does not exist in comedy at all. And comedy engenders this weird anger in people. And I sort of get it. When you’re watching someone that you don’t think is funny, you are thinking to yourself, ‘I’m funnier than this guy!’ And you start to get angrier and angrier about it– like I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY HE IS ON THE STAGE! And that’s where heckling comes from. The idea that not only am I entitled to say something– I should say something, because what is happening here is wrong. People forget that it’s subjective. When they’re sitting in the audience, they never say, ‘this is not my cup of tea.’ It never stops there. The whole idea of tea is being questioned.
Ron Bennington: So hecklers almost see it like a heroic move that they’re making.
Paul F. Tompkins: Yea I think they do. It’s more than just – this will be fun to wreck this guys night. It’s like– somebody has to step in here and do something.
Ron Bennington: This is good to learn. It’s almost like they’re Occupy Wall Street where they’re going to bring the whole fucking system down, and turn it around, and then we’re in charge.
Paul F. Tompkins: That’s right! They’re going to start getting more and more people on their side. That’s how they see it. It’s like, ‘once I bust out with this comment, everybody is going to start paying attention to me, and balance will be restored to the universe.’
Ron Bennington: Now how long did it take you before you could command the stage if someone was heckling. Did you have it right away?
Paul F. Tompkins: Oh, my..no. It took a long time. And I think this is common to a lot of new comedians. You start out and you think, anybody that says anything, you have to shut them down right away. This person is trying to usurp my authority, and so I must make an example of them, so others will not be so emboldened. And then after a while I realized, oh some people are not trying to wreck the show. Some people are into what you’re saying or adding to something that you’re saying. That’s when I would stop and talk to people, if only to just see what they’re motive was. Sometimes you know right away if somebody is trying to be a jerk. But sometimes people honestly just forget that it’s not a conversation and they just start responding to you in a conversational way. And once I realized these people are not doing something bad, I realized there was a potential there for a fun moment to happen. And trying to keep in mind, always, always, always, to be in the moment. And what’s so wonderful about live performance is– this is all happening only once. We’re all together this one time, and that’s it. And so any kind of moment like that, that happens, can be a magical thing. You don’t want to extinguish that. You don’t want to snuff it all out before it all happens.
Ron Bennington: And you’ve kind of fallen into or started this thing out at Largo that now is somewhat infamous around the country because you guys have found this different way of doing entertainment.
Paul F. Tompkins: I’m one of those guys that doing the same stuff for too long will get boring to me. I will max out at about a year of doing the same set. But doing the show at Largo, and the podcast– I get to do all the types of comedy that I like to do. I get to do some sketch, I get to do some stream of consciousness stuff, I get to do some stand up. So I’ve been able to take that stuff out on the road more and more lately and do it in other places. I’ll be going back to Sketchfest in San Francisco and doing the Paul F. Tompkins show– the variety show– there. And we’re doing it in Vancouver. We might be doing it at the Melbourne Comedy Festival this coming year. Trying to bring something– I love doing the stand up but if I can do the other stuff as well, I am thrilled to do that.
Ron Bennington: What had you slide it into variety? Cause if anything its just taking up more of your time and there’s more things that can completely screw up that are out of your control.
Paul F. Tompkins: Absolutely. I always loved variety shows when I was a kid. I grew up watching Sonny and Cher and Donnie and Marie. And the husband and wife mime team Shields and Yarnell who briefly had a variety show. I don’t know how that happened. Keep in mind….there were three channels. There were only three channels, and yet somebody said– this husband and wife mime team– we should give them an hour-long variety show. And every episode ended with them on a big bed, and they were saying goodnight to the audience surrounded by stuffed animals. And they would say good night.
Ron Bennington: Those two are divorced too.
Paul F. Tompkins: WHAT!? This is how I find out?
Ron Bennington: Yea. They didn’t make it. Two people that have more in common, you would think, than anyone else in the world.
Paul F. Tompkins: I wanted to do this show. And the Largo used to be a night club, a little night club on Fairfax Avenue in 
West Hollywood. Back in those days, the show cost 5 dollars and there was a lot of drinking done by everybody both on and off stage. And it was a very loose kind of thing; there were mistakes that happened; things did not go off as planned, but it was all part of the show, who cares. People love those spontaneous moments. Then the Largo moved to a theater in West Hollywood, with, like, a curtain that opened and closed. And to me, this was like– ‘oh now I’m going to do the show the way I really want to do it.’ So then when mistakes would happen and people would say ‘oh you know people like it when there’s screw ups and stuff like that.’ I’m like– not for 25 dollars, they don’t; I don’t like it. So there is much more potential for things to go wrong. And it’s hard to oversee every single thing and to work around people’s schedules. It’s a lot of people who don’t have a ton of time to devote to my vanity project of doing this variety show so rehearsal is very limited. And its kind of miraculous to be able to pull it off month after month. But when you’re working with really great people than you’re going to get great results.
Ron Bennington: And because of all that you have picked up this reputation as a hip cool thing, but did you have that before you got into these shows?
Paul F. Tompkins: I think it’s due to those shows. I would say that the biggest thing that gave me any kind of cred like that was doing Mr. Show, which was my first big break in Los Angeles. And I’m forever grateful to Bob Odenkirk and David Cross for giving me that job.
Because I’m absolutely certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that I got to meet people that I would not have otherwise met. And then I got to work with them on something else. Would not have happened I don’t think, if it had not been for that show.
Ron Bennington: And it still reminds me of your voice, right from the beginning. That was perfect to bring you in. Cause there were a lot of shows where you wouldn’t have fit.
Paul F. Tompkins: Absolutely. I probably would have floundered at MadTv. Bob and David– they were great mentors. They were great bosses in that they had seemingly unlimited patience to show us– who were new to this world– the ropes of sketch writing. Bob especially had been a vet of SNL and then the Ben Stiller Show where he met David. Those guys were great with us in helping us figure out how to capture somebody else’s voice. But also just really great basics of sketch writing. Those disciplines I have taken with me to everything that I do. So the way I approach things now, is absolutely with the lessons that I learned from working on that show.
Ron Bennington: And being a good standup comic, and being a sketch writers– it’s almost two different things.
Paul F. Tompkins: Absolutely. There are disciplines that I find apply to both. The biggest lesson for me in both stand up and sketch was, am I getting out of this everything that I can get out of it, and, is there enough surprise in it for the audience. Because the thing that comedy comes down to for me, especially as a practitioner, what’s going to make me laugh is something I’m not expecting. And the longer you do it, the less you’re surprised and its like– yea that was a well crafted joke. The mathematical principles apply; it’s just the science of it. So when somebody can really take you by surprise out of nowhere, that is funny to me. So that’s what I’m always trying to do in both arenas.
Ron Bennington: But that’s getting tougher I guess because your audience knows you better. The initial thing is, ‘great they’re coming out to see me,’ but after a couple of tours through…
Paul F. Tompkins: And that’s the biggest fear too. I don’t want it to ever be like– yea I know how that guy’s thing goes. It’s a tough thing to have a style, but not a formula. One thing is great and one thing is awful. What I’ve tried to do is draw more and more on my personal life, and the emotion behind the stories that I tell so it can be something that’s relatable to people on a human level, but also it’s not something you see coming because it’s a story. It’s not a conclusion you’re going to arrive at ahead of me, because it happened to me in real life.
Ron Bennington: But if you just do that thing of dragging your personal life out there, I don’t know if that is art, anymore. You do have to create at some point, something new that didn’t exist before.
Paul F. Tompkins: That’s the raw material, but you still have to do something with it. And that to me is the challenge of– this can’t just be me telling a story. There’s got to be something else behind it. The last hour that I just recorded was about different jobs that I’ve had, and that includes some show business jobs. But I didn’t want to be like, ‘and then I did this movie.’ So I knew that, okay this was not going to be a thing that most people can relate to, and I can’t act like it is. But what people can relate to is the feelings and anxieties that I had going into it; being in a place where I feel like I don’t belong, and I’m going to get in trouble. And most of the stories revolve around, I felt like I did not belong and I was going to get yelled at and somebody was going to ask me to leave. And it was very cathartic for me, and people said really nice things afterward, like I totally related to that, and I was like, Thank God!
Ron Bennington: But you do feel that way when you show up on a film set.
Paul F. Tompkins: Oh yea. I’m better with that now than I ever had been, but honestly, I’m afraid to talk to anyone, I’m afraid to go anywhere, and this has been half of my life now. But I’m still like, ‘I’m sorry, is there a place I can go to change my clothes? Is that allowed?’ Every single time.
Ron Bennington: And you’re not even talking to the director that way.
Paul F. Tomkins: No! I’m talking to first guy I see who is clearly the lowest person on the totem pole and I’m like, ‘am I allowed to use the bathroom?’
Ron Bennington: So there’s a slight confidence problem?
Paul F. Tompkins: Always. A lot of it is reminding myself that I’m an adult. You know what I mean? Technically I’m a man. I’m allowed to just talk to people and if somebody yells at me, I can yell back at them and say, ‘hold on a second, you can’t talk to me that way.’
Ron Bennington: That’s a good plan!
Paul F. Tompkins: Always in the back of my mind– if they yell, you yell back!
Ron Bennington: But you keep putting yourself in unsafe circumstances. Like I said– you’re a stand up– you know how to do it. Now you’re making a variety show that can really screw up. It seems to me that as soon as you get something the way it’s supposed to be done, it’s out the window for you.
Paul F. Tompkins: When I was thinking about doing the variety show, and I was worried about singing in the show. Cause I can carry a tune. I would never put out an album but I can sing alright and I thought it would be fun to sing a song with the musical guest. You know, some cover that everybody knows, and it would be a fun thing, and I would never take it too seriously. I was very anxious about it and a friend of mine who was a musician said sometimes you have to run at the thing you’re afraid of instead of running away from it. And it was just that simple. That resonated with me, and I thought, ‘you know what, that is absolutely right.’ Because the benefits that you reap from trying something and then getting better at it, succeeding at it, far outweigh the comfort of never trying. I was a guy who would take an easy way out if I could, because I was afraid of what might happen ‘if’. It’s fear of failure, fear of success. It’s the classic psychology of fucked up people that get into show business. But then once I started challenging myself in those ways it improved my life across the board. There were things that I was able to do that I wasn’t able to do before. I was able to quit smoking. I was able to go into therapy and figure my life out. I was able to have good relationships instead of horrible relationships. I was able to finally learn how to drive a car which had been a huge fear block for me for all of my life. Last year, at the age of 42, I got my driver’s license. And now I love driving. And now the struggle is to not beat myself up for my past behavior. And say, just be happy now. Just be happy now that you can do the thing.
Ron Bennington: So you’re saying that even taking chances on stage– that changed the rest of your life.
Paul F. Tompkins: It teaches me how, things are never as scary as you think they’re going to be. And the older I get, the more perspective I get on what is important. When my mother died in 2007– that’s one of those things where the whole landscape of your universe changes, and you realize, oh my life will never be the same again, because this huge presence is no longer there. I think a big thing for me was, the fact that she chose to die. She was in really poor health and the doctor told her, you kind of have very limited choices. The quality of your life is going to diminish the older you get. You’re going to have to have these various procedures more and more often. Or you can go off dialysis, let nature take its course and its going to be painless and you’ll just kind of go. And so she chose to do that. The idea to me that you could ever say, alright, that’s enough, I’ve had enough. I’ve lived x amount of years. For me, entering into middle age, it’ s like, how do I live as long as possible. What do I do? All that I think about is, well I’ll be dead soon…I will be dead soon. Soon I will be in my grave. So, the idea that you could ever be comfortable with letting go– there’s a lesson there that I’m still trying to learn. Figuring out how to get to a point of grace like that, where you’re able to say, I have lived enough and it’s okay that this is happening. So that kind of shift in perspective is like, well that’s clearly a more important issue to deal with, than, does that guy like me? Do they think I”m dumb or do they think I’m cool. That becomes less important.
Ron Bennington: Well you brought up the word grace which is almost never used anymore. But it used to be thought of as a way to live an entire life. How can I go through life smoothly taking care of other people? But somehow we’ve gotten away from that and really spent a lot of time wondering if we’re cool or whether we’re going to have all of the stuff we want.
Paul F. Tompkins: It’s such an easy trap to fall into, and it’s so hard to climb out of. It takes these big cold water in the face moments – oh I’ve been an asshole, I didn’t realize what an an asshole I was for such a long time. I find myself more and more being able to let go of things. Literally like– I have too much dumb shit in this house that I’ve been moving from place to place. And just holding on to these things that I think make me who I am; and trying to divest myself of this stuff to live a simpler life. I’m not exactly going to Walden Pond. I like to watch television– I like my big tv. But you know, just trying– as corny as this may sound– the more literal objects you clear away from your life, the easier it is to see what’s around you and just kind of see life and enjoy it.
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You can hear the interview in its entirety exclusively on Sirius XM Satellite Radio. Don’t have Satellite radio yet? Click here for a free trial.
For more information on Paul F Tomkins you can follow him on twitter @PFTompkins or visit his website and check out the Pod F. Tompkast too.
And you can download
