That time I interviewed Paula Poundstone (the first time ... ) July 23, 2004
Sober, brassy and loveably silly, Paula Poundstone resurfaces and hits the stand-up trail again
By Daniel Kusner Life+Style Editor
Robert Downey Jr. bounces from rehab to jail and wins an Emmy.
Martha Stewart is sentenced to five months and journalists trip over Barbara
Walters for interviews.
In June 2001, Paula Poundstone was at the epicenter of tabloid hell — charged with child endangerment and three counts of committing a lewd act on a girl under the age of 14.
Poundstone pleaded no contest to a felony count of child endangerment and misdemeanor infliction of injury on a child.
The endangerment charge involved driving drunk with children in her car.
She was sentenced to 180 days at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center and five years probation.
Poundstone has since regained custody of her children, ages 12, 9 and 5.
For more than a year, Poundstone has been available for interviews, but the mainstream press has virtually ignored her.
“It’s not a comeback, really. I didn’t work for six months — the six months that I was in stupid rehab,” Poundstone corrects me over the phone from her California home.
She’s been busy hitting the club circuit with her “Unauthorized Autobiography” tour.
On Thursday for a four-day run Poundstone returns to the Improv in Addison
She’s been earning raves for her loping, hilarious act that weaves audience interaction, wry political commentary, a sidesplitting foot-puppet show and a routine that squeezes lemonade from her painful lapse in judgment.
Aside from a 2002 interview with Maria Shriver, Poundstone hasn’t made any TV appearances.
She finally returns to the talk-show circuit with a July 23 booking on David Letterman.
But she used to be the queen of late night and was hired by the “The Tonight Show” as its official correspondent for the 1992 presidential race.
Paula Poundstone is a newsworthy subject, right?
“That kind of thinking clearly puts you in the minority.
Of course, in my house, I’m a household name, which I insist on,” she laughs. “But there are a lot of reasons to why I’m not covered much.
Not the least of which is just the climate of my business — a lot of clubs and concert stuff is down.
But my horrible mistakes certainly haven’t made life any easier.”
Her material is filled with observations about frustrating lawyers, cops, mysteries of the legal system and the irony of being publicly ordered to join Alcoholics Anonymous.
Most people would put the ugly past behind them, but Poundstone is self-deprecatingly candid.
“Some facts in the case are actually sealed.
So I’m not at liberty to go into great detail, other than I’m guilty to what I pleaded to.
And I’m now a world-famous child abuser, which I can’t tell you what pride that fills me with,” she says.
"I wasn’t exactly granted privacy to begin with, so it would be false to drape myself into this great open and honest person.”
Maybe it’s not entirely her candor, but Poundstone is a goddess when it comes to nosy questions — just by tossing back funny answers.
Let’s take her sexual identity.
Although her signature fashion sense leans toward men’s suits and ties, Poundstone has remained evasive about being gay or straight.
Is it that she’s disgusted by both genders?
“I think 'disgusted' is a little strong.
I’m just not a real sexual being.
But I’m so happy for the rest of you,” she says.
“Every now and then, I’ll see a gay couple on the street comer kissing, and I think ‘God, that seems so sweet and nice.’
Then I think about everything that built up to that moment and what they had to do with their lives to get there, and I say ‘No, not for me.”
Has she ever tried dating a woman?
“Sure, I’ve tried.
But I have the same lack of drive for women that I have for men,” Poundstone says.”
I don’t think it’s out of the question.
I really have tabled that part of life.
When my kids are grown and self-supporting, then I might date.
But I don't think they should start queuing up now.”
Poundstone was last in Dallas on the same week the Supreme Court overturned the Texas sodomy law.
When I tell her that an audience member shouted “We’re legal” during her set, the comedian seemed to have taken a hairpin turn from the topic and didn’t respond at all.
“I didn’t?
Gosh.
Maybe I didn’t catch the reference,” she says.
But Poundstone had at least one joke up her sleeve.
“Massachusetts is my home state, and I say that with such great pride.
If someone would have said Mississippi was going to be the state to step up to the plate on gay marriage, I certainly would have been more blown away.
But I never would have guessed such a small state like Massachusetts,” she says.
“But I have a theory that they’re not going to allow gay divorce.
And that this will in essence make the issue moot.
I don’t think even gay people will want to take that step without knowing there was a back door somewhere.”
As she makes her way back to the late-night couch, does Poundstone hope her
career will get back on the big-time track?
She says her career goals are simplified.
She lives in Southern California and desperately hopes to finish her long-in-development book during the next year.
“But I love my job.
I love performing in front of five audiences.
I go onstage, and I say things that I think are funny to a room full of people who seem to share my opinion on what’s funny — sometimes," she says. “So long as I can support myself doing it.
I feel honored, privileged to do that.”
HEY, HEY, PAULA: Poundstone returns to the Addison Improv for a four-night run beginning Thursday
Improv in Addison, 4980 Beltline Rd., Ste. 250.
July 29 at 8:30p.m., $20:
July 30 at 8:30p.m. and 10:30p.m., $22;
Aug. 1 at 7:30p.m., $20. 972-404-8501.
https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth616458/m1/36/
