(born December 6, 1955) is an American comedian, actor and writer. He is known for his distinctly lethargic voice and slow, deadpan delivery of ironic, philosophical and sometimes nonsensical jokes and one-liners with contrived situations.
Early life and career
Wright was born in Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and grew up in Burlington, Massachusetts, one of four children of Lucille “Dolly” (née Lomano) and Alexander K. Wright. He was raised Catholic. His mother was Italian American and his father was of Scottish descent.Wright's father, an electronics engineer who "tested a lot of stuff for the Apollo space program," became a truck driver after that program ended.
Wright spent two years obtaining an associate's degree from Middlesex Community College in Bedford, Massachusetts, before enrolling at Emerson College. He graduated from the latter in 1978 and began performing stand-up comedy in 1979 at the Boston comedy club the Comedy Connection. He cites George Carlin and Woody Allen among his influences.
In 1982, Peter Lassally, executive producer of The Tonight Show, noticed Wright performing on a bill with other local comics at the comedy club Ding Ho,in Cambridge's Inman Square, a venue Wright described as "half Chinese restaurant and half comedy club. It was a pretty weird place". 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. In May 2000, Wright and other Ding Ho alumni, including Lenny Clarke, Barry Crimmins, Steve Sweeney, Bill Sohonage, and Jimmy Tingle, appeared at a reunion benefit for comic Bob Lazarus, suffering from leukemia.
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. The success of this album landed him a much coveted HBO special, which he recorded as a live college concert performance, "A Steven Wright Special". By now Wright had firmly developed a new brand of obscure laid back performance and was rapidly building a cult-ish mystique and eclectic hip following. His opening act for the HBO concert was fellow "Ding Ho" comedy alumni Bill Sohonage who recounts that Stevens casual laid back nature was no act, "He walked into my dressing room minutes before I was to take stage and asked if he could borrow a shirt, as his had a giant pizza stain. You would think it might be normal to be a little nervous going on a college stage in front of 23,000, let alone having HBO out there filming but as I passed by his room while walking on-stage I saw him sound asleep and loudly snoring". The performance would become one of HBO's longest running and most requested comedy specials and propel him to huge success on the college arena concert circuits.
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.
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".
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".
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.
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.
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.
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 RCMP 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
[edit]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)
Source:Steven Wright
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