Steven Wright

Steven Wright
Wright at Tufts University, 1994
Birth name	Steven Alexander Wright
Born	December 6, 1955 (1955-12-06) (age 53) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Medium	stand-up, film, television
Nationality	American
Years active	1979 - present
Genres	Surreal humor, post-modernism, Wit/Word play, Observational comedy, Musical comedy, Deadpan
Influences	Woody Allen, George Carlin[1]
Influenced	Mitch Hedberg, Demetri Martin, Jimmy Carr[citation needed]
Notable works and roles	I Have a Pony K-Billy DJ in Reservoir Dogs Speed in The Swan Princess Guy on the Couch in Half Baked I Still Have a Pony
Website	StevenWright.com
Academy Awards
Best Short Film, Live Action 1988 The Appointments of Dennis Jennings

Steven Alexander Wright (born December 6, 1955) is an Academy Award-winning American comedian, actor and writer. He is known for his distinctly lethargic voice and slow, deadpan delivery of ironic, witty, philosophical and sometimes deeply confusing or nonsensical jokes and one-liners with intentionally contrived situations.

Biography

Early life and career

Steven Wright was born in Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts,^[2] and raised in Burlington, Massachusetts,^[2] one of four children of Dolly and Alexander Wright.^[2] His father, an electronics engineer who "tested a lot of stuff for the Apollo space program," became a truck driver after that program ended.^[2]

Wright spent two years obtaining an associate's degree from Middlesex Community College in Bedford, Massachusetts, before enrolling at Emerson College.^[3] He graduated from the latter in 1978^[3] and began performing stand-up comedy in 1979^[2][4] at the Boston comedy club the Comedy Connection.^[2][3] He cites George Carlin and Woody Allen among his influences.^[5]

In 1982, Peter Lassally, executive producer of the influential late-night television talk show The Tonight Show, noticed Wright performing on a bill with other local comics at the comedy club Ding Ho,^[6] in Cambridge's Inman Square,^[7] a venue Wright described as "half Chinese restaurant and half comedy club. It was a pretty weird place".^[2] Lassally booked Wright on The Tonight Show, where the comic so impressed host Johnny Carson and the studio audience that Wright was brought back less than a week later.^[5] In May 2007, Wright and other Ding Ho alumni, including Lenny Clarke, Barry Crimmins, Steve Sweeney, and Jimmy Tingle, appeared at a reunion benefit for fellow comic Bob Lazarus, suffering from leukemia.^[7]

Stand-up success

Wright's 1985 comedy album was entitled I Have a Pony, released on Warner Bros. Records, received critical acclaim and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. In 1989, he and fellow producer Dean Parisot won an Academy Award for their 30-minute short film The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, directed by Parisot, written by Mike Armstrong and Wright, and starring Wright and Rowan Atkinson. In 1992, Wright had a recurring role on the television sitcom Mad About You. He also supplied the voice of the radio DJ in writer-director Quentin Tarantino's film Reservoir Dogs that year. "Dean Parisot's wife Sally Menke is Quentin Tarantino's [film] editor, so when she was editing the movie and it was getting down toward the end where they didn't have the radio DJ yet, she thought of me and told Quentin and he liked the idea", Wright explained in 2009.^[2]

Numerous lists of jokes attributed to Wright circulate on the Internet, sometimes of dubious origin. Wright has stated, "Someone showed me a site, and half of it that said I wrote it, I didn't write. Recently, I saw one, and I didn't write any of it. What's disturbing is that with a few of these jokes, I wish I had thought of them. A giant amount of them, I'm embarrassed that people think I thought of them, because some are really bad".^[8]

After his 1990 comedy special Wicker Chairs and Gravity, Wright continued to do stand-up performances, but was largely absent from television, only doing occasional guest spots on late-night talk shows. In 1999, he wrote and directed the 30-minute short "One Soldier", "about a soldier who was in the Civil War, right after the war, with all these existentialist thoughts and wondering if there is a God and all that stuff".^[2]

In 2006, Wright produced his first stand-up special in 16 years, Steven Wright: When the Leaves Blow Away, originally airing on Comedy Central on October 21, 2006. Its DVD was released April 23, 2007.^{[citation needed]}

On September 25, 2007, Wright released a follow-up to I Have a Pony, titled I Still Have a Pony (a CD release of the material from When the Leaves Blow Away). It was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.

Awards and honors

Steven Wright was awarded an Oscar in 1989 for Best Short Live-Action Film for The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, which he co-wrote (with Michael Armstrong) and starred in.

On December 15, 2008, Wright became the first inductee to the Boston Comedy Hall of Fame.^[6][9]

In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. He was named #23 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics.

In a 2009 poll to find viewers favorite puppet on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Steven Wright received several votes as a write-in candidate. The voting is ongoing as of July 11, 2009.

Filmography

• Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) as Larry Stillman D.D.S.
• "The Appointments of Dennis Jennings" (1988) (short film) (Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film)
• Stars and Bars (1988) as Pruitt
• Reservoir Dogs (1992) (voice only) as K-Billy DJ
• So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993) as Pilot
• Natural Born Killers (1994) as Dr. Emil Reingold
• The Swan Princess (1994) as Speed (voice)
• Mixed Nuts (1994) as Suicidal man at pay phone
• Canadian Bacon (1995) as Canadian Mounted Police Officer
• Half Baked (1998) as The Guy on the Couch (uncredited)
• Babe: Pig in the City (1998) as Bob (voice)
• "One Soldier" (1999) (short film)
• The Muse (1999)
• Loser (2000) as Man in Bar
• Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) as Steven
• The Aristocrats (2005) as himself
• When Stand Up Stood Out (2005) as himself
• Son of the Mask (2005) as The Boss

Discography

• I Have a Pony, Warner Bros. Records CD (1985)
• A Steven Wright Special, HBO DVD (1985)
• The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, DVD (1989)
• One Soldier, DVD (1999)
• When the Leaves Blow Away, DVD (2006)
• I Still Have a Pony, Comedy Central Records CD (2007)

References

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Steven Wright

External links

• Official site
• Steven Wright at the Internet Movie Database
• Wright-House.com: Jokes attributed to Steven Wright, with actual authors identified
• Dead-Frog.com: Video of Steven Wright from When the Leaves Blow Away
• Interview: Steven Wright Riverfront Times. October 2008.