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Tag: patton oswalt

  • Patton Oswalt’s journey from Va. military brat to Pixar animated rat – WTOP News

    Patton Oswalt’s journey from Va. military brat to Pixar animated rat – WTOP News

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    Virginia-native comedian Patton Oswalt returns home to perform live at The Lyric in Baltimore on Friday.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Patton Oswalt at The Lyric in Baltimore (Part 1)

    Virginia-native comedian Patton Oswalt returns home to perform live at The Lyric in Baltimore, Maryland, on Friday.

    Patton Oswalt seen at KAABOO 2017 at the Del Mar Racetrack and Fairgrounds on Friday, Sept. 15, 2017, in San Diego, Calif. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP)(Amy Harris/Invision/AP/Amy Harris)

    He admits that it’s a tricky time to craft standup material after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

    “I’m sure I’ll be talking about it,” Oswalt told WTOP. “I don’t how I’ll talk about it yet, but you can’t not. I feel like at this point if you don’t talk about it you look like you’re insane. … I don’t have anything in my head yet, but I have until Friday to get my head together on it, so I’m sure I’ll have an angle on it by then. We’ll see.”

    Aside from the chaotic political elephant in the room, what else will Oswalt be talking about in his routine?

    “I hate to sound too general, but just life as I’m living it in a very crazed, accelerationist world, how I’m trying to stay funny and sane, which I think most people are trying to do, I just happen to be funnier because I’ve been doing this for so long,” Oswalt said.

    It’s OK if he sounds too “general” because he was named after one of the most famous American generals ever. Born the son of a U.S. Marine Corps officer in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1969, Oswalt was named after World War II General George Patton, a year before Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning movie script for “Patton” (1970).

    “I think he was writing when I was being born, oh my goodness, I think he was writing that script — it’s all coming together!” Oswalt said. “My birth manifested the Oscar that (actor George C. Scott) turned down — think about that! ‘You beautiful bastard, I read your book!’ — and a baby is born.”

    As a military brat, Oswalt moved with his family from Ohio to California before finally settling back in Sterling, Virginia. He graduated from Broad Run High School in Ashburn in 1987 before earning a B.A. in English from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, which gave him an honorary doctorate last year.

    His early standup acts roasted legendary NBC Washington and WJLA movie critic (and my great friend) Arch Campbell.

    “I have since met him and love him,” Oswalt said. “There is a very grudging affection for him.”

    Oswalt said he remembers Campbell trashing Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and “The Road Warrior.”

    “He gave me something to rebel against,” Oswalt said. “He was so himself that he gave me something to be like, ‘No, this guy is wrong!’ Tell him that I am happy that he was a worthy foe when you go on his podcast. I love Arch.”

    Soon, Oswalt made his way west to San Francisco, California, to take his standup career to the next level.

    “The comedy scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s on the East Coast was starting to collapse a little bit,” Oswalt said. “The boom was over and I needed to go to a city where I could live cheap and get a lot of sets to get good.”

    In the early 90s, Oswalt said he lived cheap in San Francisco, eating 75-cent burritos: “A couple of those would keep you alive, and then you would just go do sets every night, it was great.”

    Upon moving to L.A., he made his acting debut in “The Couch” episode of “Seinfeld” (1994), playing a video store clerk as George Costanza (Jason Alexander) tried to rent “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” instead of reading the book.

    “It was my first ever television acting gig and I was so nervous. [Alexander] could see how nervous I was and right before they said, ‘Action!,’ he leaned into me and said, ‘It’s not too late to be fired, Patton,’ and it made me laugh so hard that it got rid of all of my tension,” Oswalt said. “I kind of owe a big leap in my career to that guy. He was very nice and very instinctive as a fellow actor.”

    After that, Oswalt began writing for the hit sketch-comedy series “MADtv” before joining the sitcom cast of “The King of Queens” (1998-2007), playing Kevin James’ nerdy friend Spence Olchin.

    “He was really fun,” Oswalt said. “I got to do a lot of stuff with Jerry Stiller. I got to do a lot of plots where I fall in love with a mascot at an amusement park, or I date a gay guy to try to boost my confidence — I just want him to hit on me so I can turn him down, but he never hits on me, then I start pursuing him.”

    The show allowed an outlet for him to act in “edgier stories,” he said.

    “It was a very good nine years where I basically got paid to learn how to act better,” Oswalt said.

    He next narrated “The Goldbergs” (2013-2023) similar to Daniel Stern’s voiceover on “The Wonder Years.”

    “I had been doing so much narration and voiceover at that point that I just decided to make it my own voice,” Oswalt said. “They started the show focused on the kids, then they realized the parents were crazier. … Wendi McLendon-Covey and her whole overprotective Philly helicopter mom in the ’80s was truly amazing. Getting to watch that show while I narrated it was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is a nice gig. I’m not complaining about this.’”

    Still, his voice is best known as the hero of Pixar’s Oscar-winning animated film “Ratatouille” (2007), voicing the aspiring rat chef Remy, who has to please a snobby food critic voiced by Peter O’Toole (“Lawrence of Arabia”).

    “I remember I was at Pixar one day and they had just recorded Peter O’Toole,” Oswalt said. “They got his audio in and the animators were listening to it, they hadn’t animated it yet, and they were rubbing their hands together like, ‘These are the Glengarry leads of animation.’ … It’s a fantastic film right up there with ‘Up,’ saying something about life, creativity and how to live with both. It’s very entertaining but way deeper than you think it is.”

    Along the way, Oswalt has of course cranked out tons of standup comedy, from his 1996 HBO special to his third comedy album recorded at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium to air on Comedy Central.

    So far, seven of his comedy albums have been nominated for Grammys: “My Weakness is Strong” (2010), “Finest Hour” (2012), “Tragedy Plus Comedy Equals Time” (2015), “Talking for Clapping” (2017), “Annihilation” (2019), “I Love Everything” (2021) and “We All Scream” (2023). He won for “Talking for Clapping” on Netflix.

    “The one that I think is my strongest is ‘Annihilation,’” Oswalt said. “‘Talking But Clapping’ was a weird time doing that. My wife had just passed away, the whole year was very, very strange, it was a surreal time, but if you’re talking about where did I dig the deepest but still got laughs, I would say ‘Annihilation’ is the one I’m most proud of.”

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Patton Oswalt at The Lyric in Baltimore (Part 2)

    Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:

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    Jason Fraley

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  • The Replacements: Armie Hammer, Johnny Depp, and 7 Other Actors Who Were Replaced Onscreen

    The Replacements: Armie Hammer, Johnny Depp, and 7 Other Actors Who Were Replaced Onscreen

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    Shortly after LaBeouf’s departure, two women accused the actor of physical, mental, and emotional abuse, and he told The New York Times, “I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, only rationalizations. I have been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years.… I’m ashamed of that history and am sorry to those I hurt.” But ahead of the film’s 2022 release, LaBeouf denied being fired, sharing emails with Variety in which he told Wilde, “I quit your film”; he alleged that he left Don’t Worry Darling due to inadequate rehearsal time. Later, while appearing on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Wilde said, “We had to replace Shia. He is a fantastic actor, but it wasn’t going to work. When he gave the ultimatum—him or Florence—I chose Florence. That was him feeling he was stepping away and me feeling like we were moving on without him,” adding, “It’s a question of semantics.”

    Blake Jenner

    Fresh off his best-actor Oscar nomination for Aftersun, Paul Mescal is seizing the role of Broadway composer Franklin Shepard in Richard Linklater’s Merrily We Roll Along, taking the part over from Jenner, who previously worked with the filmmaker on Everybody Wants Some!! While no official reason has been cited for Jenner’s departure, his ex-wife, Melissa Benoist, revealed in 2019 that she was a survivor of domestic abuse, though she did not name the perpetrator. Jenner, whom Benoist married after they played love interests on Glee, later confirmed the allegations and apologized, but he also claimed he had been abused as well prior to their divorce in 2017.

    Using the multiyear filming approach that he took with 2014’s Boyhood, Linklater will shoot Merrily over a 20-year period, with Mescal, Ben Platt, and Beanie Feldstein starring as the main trio. Last April, Platt said that Linklater had shot “the first sequence” of the film, but it’s unclear if or how any of Jenner’s footage was reconfigured. 

    Louis C.K. 

    The disgraced comedian admitted to sexual misconduct with multiple women in 2017, releasing a statement in which he admitted, “These stories are true. At the time, I said to myself that what I did was okay because I never showed a woman my dick without asking first, which is also true.” The professional fallout for C.K. was swift, as a deal between FX Productions and his production company, Pig Newton, was canceled, and wide-release plans for his film I Love You, Daddy were scrapped. 

    Amidst the rubble were two of the star’s voice-over roles. Reruns of Disney Channel’s Gravity Falls, on which C.K. voiced a character named “the Horrifying Sweaty One-Armed Monstrosity,” were redubbed by series creator Alex Hirsch. And he didn’t reprise his role as Jack Russell terrier Max in 2019’s Secret Life of Pets 2, a part that instead went to Patton Oswalt. “I did have some hesitations, but it was more about the story rather than the voice, so I just said, ‘All right,’” Oswalt told The Hollywood Reporter about taking on the job. Since the fallout, C.K. has won a Grammy, embarked on a nationwide comedy tour, and directed another movie. 

    Johnny Depp

    Before his defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard, Depp resigned from his role as Gellert Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, the third film in the Harry Potter prequel series. The exit followed his loss in a 2020 libel case against the publisher of British tabloid The Sun. He was replaced by Mads Mikkelsen, although Depp reportedly still received his full $16 million salary for the project. “I’m a big fan of Johnny,” Mikkelsen said last August. “I think he’s an amazing actor; I think he did a fantastic job. Having said that, I could not copy it. There was no way I could just copy it, because it’s so much him. It would be creative suicide. So we had to come up with something else, something that was mine, and build a bridge between him and me.”

    Chris D’Elia

    After the stand-up was accused of sexually harassing and grooming underage girls in 2020, which D’Elia denies, he was erased from Zack Snyder’s Netflix zombie film, Army of the Dead. When asked about the decision to reshoot D’Elia’s scenes using Tig Notaro, Snyder told Vanity Fair: “I think it was a fairly easy one.” Producer Deborah Snyder added, “It was an expensive one, that’s for sure,” with Zack estimating that production poured “a few million” into scrubbing D’Elia’s frames and staging reshoots. 

    Ed Westwick

    In fall 2017, the Gossip Girl alum was accused of sexual assault by three separate women. The actor denied all allegations in a since-deleted tweet, writing, “I have never forced myself in any manner, on any woman. I certainly have never committed rape.” Ordeal by Innocence, the BBC adaptation of an Agatha Christie classic, in which Westwick played the black sheep son of a wealthy family, had its Christmastime release date delayed. His role was reshot with British actor Christian Cooke, who had starred alongside Westwick in 2013’s Romeo & Juliet adaptation, and the miniseries premiered in April 2018. 

    Frank Langella

    When the Oscar-nominated actor was fired from Mike Flanagan’s Netflix adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher last April, the then 84-year-old blamed his ouster on “cancel culture” in a column for Deadline. In the piece, Langella said that his costar accused him of touching her leg, a move that was not scripted by the project’s intimacy coordinator. The actor, who wrote that the project was meant to be his “last hurrah,” also said that he had been accused of  telling “an off-color joke,” sometimes calling his costar “baby” or “honey,” and hugging his coworker or touching her on the shoulder. Langella was subsequently replaced by actor Bruce Greenwood, who stars alongside Carla Gugino, Mary McDonnell, and Mark Hamill. 

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    Savannah Walsh

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  • Bay Area Author’s Latest Work, ’52’, Sparks Powerful Message in a Lonely, COVID-19 World

    Bay Area Author’s Latest Work, ’52’, Sparks Powerful Message in a Lonely, COVID-19 World

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    Inspired by the incredible true story of the 52-hertz whale, author Johnny DePalma’s latest rhyming picture book, ’52 – A Tale of Loneliness’, echoes emotions that may be felt at home.

    Press Release
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    updated: Mar 23, 2021


    SAN FRANCISCO, March 23, 2021 (Newswire.com)
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     Known throughout the San Francisco Bay Area for curating the pandemic’s Emergency Art Museum (emergencyartmuseum.com), award-winning author Johnny DePalma’s latest literary accomplishment dives deep into innate human feelings, emotions, and loneliness – something all too common in a COVID-19 world.

    “I would say all my books are somewhat autobiographical,” said DePalma, regarding his latest book, ’52 – A Tale of Loneliness.’ “Loneliness is such a universal and complex emotion. For me, my days of loneliness were also my days of unlimited imagination. I would take the time to connect with all of the small, seemingly invisible things in my life. And, looking back, I think those moments we’re incredibly important. Years later, when I learned about the 52-hertz whale, (also known as the loneliest whale in the world) I knew I wanted to write a book that reconnects with that misunderstood emotion.”

    This children’s tale, recommended for ages 4-8, has recently hit home for an audience of all ages. Taking place far beneath the beautiful sea, a unique whale sings a song that is all his own. Told in short, poetic passages, this whale, simply known as 52, celebrates the joy of life he’s found beneath the ocean waves. Yet, despite his isolation, 52 remains optimistic and introduces readers to the magic, beauty, and joy found within his own invisible world.

    DePalma details the beauty of isolation with effortlessness throughout the book, writing, “And that’s all mine! I get to see, the things invisible, like me! So, every night, I say hello, to all the barnacles below. To every bubble, kelp, and shell. To every grain of sand as well. For all these things make up my home, and with them, I don’t feel alone.”

    “It’s been greatly inspired by the California coast,” said DePalma. “After all, that is where the real-life 52-hertz whale has been known to travel. In 2018, my good friend and illustrator, Kyle Brown and I took a research trip from Point Conception, to Monterey, and eventually through San Francisco to find the creative spark needed for the illustrations in this book. I couldn’t be happier with the result. It’s my hope that children and families alike will uncover that same special spark of joy that 52 has found. Considering what we’ve all been going through, I think embracing some of these feelings, and putting a voice to them is going to be an important step for children moving forward.”

    DePalma went on to say, “As children start heading back to school, social and emotional learning tools are going to be imperative. Characters like 52 are there to help guide children through those difficult feelings and to help them find their voice in a world that might suddenly feel a bit different. I want children to know that being unique can be a positive and powerful thing. Sometimes, it just takes the right perspective for them to see that.”

    One recent reviewer stated, “DePalma effectively validates feelings that are relatable to children of various ages. Although 52 experiences loneliness, and sometimes feels invisible, he still sings, and his tale is not a sad one. This good-natured whale exemplifies themes of self-acceptance, individuality, contentment, empathy, bravery, and joy.” – Cecilia_L

    Terra Jolé, of “Dancing with the Stars,” fame stated, “This book is a wonderful way for children to feel content with who they are. This speaks loudly to me as a mother isolating her family through the pandemic. Embracing a world you’re creating for yourself is a powerful message in a children’s book.”

    To date, 52 – A Tale of Loneliness has won a Mom’s Choice Gold Award, and a Reader’s Favorite Five Stars. The book also includes a downloadable companion audiobook read by Emmy Award-winning actor, Patton Oswalt.

    For more information about 52 – A Tale of Loneliness, visit: umbrellybooks.com/52tale

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    Contact: Johnny DePalma

    Umbrelly Books Publishing

    hello@umbrellybooks.com

    408-666-2722

    Source: Umbrelly Books Publishing

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