Comedian Paula Poundstone has been doing stand-up for nearly 46 years now, and her forgetfulness has often been a focus of her jokes. I recently spoke with Poundstone ahead of her upcoming show at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz about forgetting and memories, including an incident that happened before one of her last performances at the Rio. She forgot to wake up on the flight and ended up in Portland. She eventually made it to the show and now says she’s got a system in place so it doesn’t happen again:
"Here's what I do now—when I walk by the flight attendants, when I board the plane, I go, 'listen, uh, you know, I'm getting off at Santa Cruz, Oakland, or wherever it is'...I said, 'if I'm asleep, will you please wake me up?' And you know what they always say? They go, 'oh well you know, no one ever misses [their stop].' And I'm like, 'yeah, they do.' It was such a great audience by the way. They went out for coffee and came back.
Click the audio player at the top of this story to listen to the interview or read the highlights below.
On being a panelist on 'Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!' and why she keeps returning to the show after all these years
It’s so much fun. The thing about Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me! is the panelists don’t have scripts. We know the questions are going to be about the week’s news. We don’t know which stories form the week’s news. Everything else, is just sort of bouncing off of each other and all that. It is a romp. It’s great fun.
On a favorite Memory from Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!
There was one time Peter [Sagal] was… I think he was doing retakes maybe at the very end of the show, or maybe it was in the midst of the show, I’ve forgotten. But there was something that he tripped over as he went to say it. Peter Sagal is so damn good at that job, so when he trips over something or doesn’t do it well, it just strikes me as funny because he is usually so perfect at it. So on this occasion, there was something he said wrong—maybe there was something particularly funny about the wrong way he said it. Anyway, I started laughing and I could not stop. And every time he tried to redo it, it only got worse. I mean down to the end, he says "this is NPR," [and] I think he said it wrong that night. And I was just howling. They kept saying, “Paula, come on. Enough now.” And I was literally paralyzed with laughter.
On her role in the Inside Out movies and if there will be an Inside Out 3
Paula Poundstone: I play "Forgetter Paula," which is kindly named after me and somewhat designed after me. It's an homage…a Poundstone homage.
Dylan Music: Any inside tip? Will there be an Inside Out 3?
PP: I don’t know the answer to that question. I will tell you that I have begged [filmmaker] Pete Docter to do an Inside Out movie where the main character Riley, whose brain we are in, gets amnesia—because instead of being in the movie for a few seconds [which is how I’m used], if she [Riley] had amnesia, the forgetters would be front and center the whole time.
DM: That would be your starring role right there! That’s amazing! I think that’s a great pitch!
PP: He [Docter] hasn’t embraced my idea yet, but he could come around.
Paula Poundstone Performs at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz on Friday, September 19th at 8pm.