In one very obvious way, Louie Anderson is to professional comedy what William Perry is to professional football: the most conspicuous corpulence.
He does nothing to hide this, plunking his 350 pounds down onto a chair, and saying, ”My next book is going to be about being fat in America.”
He is serious and the idea is intriguing, but conversations about books-to-be will have to wait because the book that Anderson has written is sitting on the desk in front of him, begging immediate attention.
It is called ”Dear Dad: Letter From an Adult Child” (Viking, $16.95)
and it is a powerful book in which Anderson, put simply, attempts through a series of letters to his dead father to understand the man and answer the question ”Why, dad, why`d you drink?”
It`s an answer that Anderson pursues zealously. One of 11 children, Anderson wanted to come to terms with the denial, insecurities, pain and guilt that characterize and burden adult children of alcoholics.
As he says in one of the letters, ”I don`t exactly want to change everything, but I do want to feel better about myself. And I want to feel better about you. Me and you.”
This need compelled Anderson in the late 1980s to begin writing letters to the father, who died of cancer in 1980. The father, also named Louie, had once been a trumpet player of some note-he recorded with Hoagy Carmichael-but by the time Louie, the son, was born, he was wasting his life on the bottle.
For a comic who rarely writes his material down-Anderson works from a rough outline-writing letters to his dead father was an unusual move. And there was no intention of putting the letters between covers for public consumption.
”I just sat down one day and started to write,” he said. ”It was a therapeutic thing, a tool to get better. One night, I took a legal pad and just started writing. It was something that I tried to avoid as long as possible. I believed that this would take me someplace I didn`t intend to go. But I never thought to pull out once I started, even though I was plagued by questions. Would I still be funny? Would I even survive?”
Heavy questions and ones that, had Anderson merely explored his tangled relationship with his father and his drinking, might have made for self-indulgent navel-gazing. But ”Dear Dad” is not only the story of a son`s tangled feelings for his father. That emotional tale is effectively woven with a narrative autobiography that traces Anderson`s career. It`s an incisive and intimate look at the forces that shape a comic and his comedy.
Anderson, whose career is the envy of most professional comics, first went on stage, prodded by friends` dares, in 1978 at a Minneapolis comedy club called Mickey Finn`s. Six months later, he quit his job as a counselor for emotionally disturbed children and honed his act in the Twin Cities. In 1984, he headed, as all comics do, for L.A., where he played the Comedy Store before making it, as relatively few comics do, on the ”Tonight Show.”
Since then, he has attained the sort of top-of-the-game trifecta of such friends as Roseanne Barr, with whom he once teamed on a 45-city concert tour: sold-out shows, a number of cable specials and a TV series in development.
His comedy, flying against certain one-liner grains, has always been conversational, family-based and wickedly observational. His act owes more to the humor of Jonathan Winters than it does to Jay Leno.
”I have made a career of laughing on the outside,” he said. ”I`ve never been a great joke teller. My comedy is much more presentational, a sort of `Join me in this` storytelling.”
Much of his early material focused on his weight and, increasingly, on his father. Those latter routines, in which he played drunk, attracted derision from some critics and confused others. The New York Times called such forays ”dark spots in Mr. Anderson`s family-entertainment style.” But what such observers failed to realize was this was Anderson`s family.
”That`s why a lot of my friends didn`t want me to publish this book,”
he said. ”I thought it was important for people to read about this even though others thought it was a mistake and some fans, before even reading it, said, `I don`t know if I`ll ever be able to laugh at Louie Anderson`s humor again.` ”
Laugh or not laugh-and readers of the book will have no worries, since Anderson flashes moments of genuine hilarity-Anderson`s old fans will probably notice a change in his humor since the writing of ”Dear Dad.”
”I`ve changed as a comic,” he said. ”I will never do any of the drunk stuff. I`ve got a new special and the stuff about my dad will be the good things. I`m confident it will work.”
The hefty sales and acceptance of ”Dear Dad”-it`s a Book of the Month Club selection-indicate that Anderson`s career will continue its upward path. ”But if it didn`t sell one copy, it`s already been a success. I`m happier,” he said. ”I feel love from my fans and I feel a love for them. I was never able to trust other human beings before, and the laughter and success I had in my career, I thought it was all a trick-that it would all be taken away, that I would be rejected.”
He doesn`t feel that way anymore. He feels good about himself, about his fans and humor, his future. But not about his weight.
”Eating does make me feel better. It`s like a good cigarette. But it`s also a form of protection and one I no longer need,” he said. ”I`ve got to work on losing it. And I think I can. My father`s life is now a success. The chain has been broken. I`ve finished with my dad. I have love for who he was and I can move on.”
And so, finally, Anderson gets around to the fat in America book-to-be and wonders when he will find the time, not to mention the emotional fortitude, to write it.
”It`s one thing to confront your father,” he said. ”It`s another, even scarier thing to confront yourself.”
With some strain, he rose from his chair, said goodbye and walked down the hall. For such a huge man, he appeared remarkably light on his feet.
