I went to a free Patton Oswalt show at Amoeba Records last night. His stand-up was fresh, and surprisingly full of ad lib. A good 65 percent of his set was playing off of people in the audience and making stuff up as he went along. If you haven’t heard any of his stand-up, follow this link to a blog that has a mp3 track from his new album, Werewolves and Lollipops. After listening to his set, I decided to buy his new cd. Partly because I already owned a cd and dvd of his and I knew how funny he was, but really, the free poster that they were giving out with the purchase pushed me over the edge. I figured since he stayed after for a signing, that I might as well stand in line and get his autograph on the poster.
After a few minutes of waiting, I finally got to the front of the line and laid my poster down in front of him. He looked up at me and a glimmer of recognition grew in his face. He asked me, “hey, haven’t we met before?” I crinkled my brow and thought about it for a second but told him that I didn’t think so. He shrugged it off, asked me my name, and signed my poster: Derek – Good Luck! Patton Oswalt.
Fast forward 13 hours and I am driving to work listening to my new Patton Oswalt CD. It’s funny and I’m digging it. He’s talking about how when he went to the Batman Begins premiere in England and there was a whole table full of food for the guests to eat and he was the only one eating. Bam! It was at that very moment that it comes rushing back to me. I had, in a sense, met Patton before, or at least was in a situation where he would have recognized me on a second occasion. Flash backwards a few months when I was asked to be a cameraman for a round table reading for a DreamWorks picture titled Tropic Thunder. Amongst several huge names of Hollywood that were at the reading, Patton was also there as one of the several writers who would help polish the script.
During the reading, he would occasionally walk past me to the food table to grab a few crackers and snacks. At one point he snuck away from his seat to grab something to munch on. As he passed by me, he gave me a funny smile and walked by in a semi-crouch as if he was trying not to distract anyone else in the general vicinity. I guess that was enough for him to remember my face these several weeks later.
So as I am laughing to myself in my car, I begin to think about the situation the night before. Perhaps he was so sure of himself that he met me before that when he signed my poster, his implied message was, “Derek – Good Luck making it in this industry if you can’t even remember when you meet someone famous. Patton Oswalt.” The picture above (thanks Doug) illustrates the exact moment when Patton asked if we had met before.
UPDATE: I finished listening to the CD on my way to work this morning and towards the end of the CD he actually talks about how he has been getting steady work polishing scripts which he refers to as “punch-ups”.
Tags: Patton Oswalt, Werewolves and Lollipops, Comedians of Comedy
