Satirist and Shaker Grad Andy Borowitz

Andy Borowitz is one of the country’s top political satirists. Born in 1958, he grew up in Shaker Heights and graduated from Shaker Heights High School, before attending Harvard University, where he was the president of the influential humor magazine the Harvard Lampoon.

He became a prolific screenwriter and television producer, writing scripts for several major studios. He created the TV show "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire" and produced the film "Pleasantville," which was nominated for four Academy Awards. He has also appeared in films, including "Marie and Bruce," with Julianne Moore and Matthew Broderick, and Woody Allen’s "Melinda and Melinda."

In addition to his popular politically satirical daily Internet column BorowitzReport.com, he has been a commentator for National Public Radio’s "Weekend Edition," MSNBC’s "Countdown with Keith Olberman," a columnist in magazines, including The New Yorker, Newsweek and Vanity Fair, and the author of five books, including Who Moved My Soap?: The CEO’s Guide to Surviving in Prison and The Borowitz Report: The Big Book of Shockers. And in his brand-new book? Scandals. Lies. A breathtaking disregard for federal laws. How on Earth do the Republicans keep winning? Easy: They've got a Playbook.

Borowitz will appear in Cleveland, for one night only, this coming Monday, November 6, at the Improv Comedy Club and Restaurant in the Powerhouse on the West Bank of the Flats. Cool Cleveland correspondent David Budin talked to Borowitz by phone last week:

Cool Cleveland: I think it’s great that you wrote for the show "Square Pegs" in the ‘80s. I’m the only one I know who ever saw that show. I really liked it.
Andy Borowitz: I was right out of college. I didn’t create it, but I wrote several episodes.

So, whatever happened to that kid who was in it, Sarah Jessica Parker?
I have no idea.

Then "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire"?
That I did create.

You won an NAACP Image Award for that. But did they know that you weren’t black?
They did when I accepted the award. I think it became very, very clear to them at that point. And I beat Bill Cosby, which I think really takes some balls to do. But everybody was very gracious about it. It was very popular show with the African-American audience, and they seemed to embrace me, even though I was a white guy from Ohio.

I thought that maybe they didn’t know, because there was a black Major League Baseball player named Eddie Solomon a while back, so they might have thought it was like that.
No, that’s one thing that there has been very little confusion about – my whiteness. I’ve built up a reputation for whiteness over the years.

I could tell, just by looking at you. Now, when you produced the movie "Pleasantville," how did that come about? I mean, how do you decide to produce a movie?
I was working with Gary Ross, who wrote and directed it. We were originally thinking of doing it as a TV show, but it was clear that it was just too ambitious from a production and visual standpoint to do it for TV. So it became a movie instead. I really haven’t done much in the movie business, but it was fun to do.

It was very successful, wasn’t it?
Yeah.

So didn’t that make you want to do more of that?
No, not really, because movies take so long to do, and I have a shorter attention span. I mean, for the Borowitz Report, I write it and that day it appears on the Internet and people read it that day. I’m into a 24-hour cycle of gratification now. In the movie business you have to wait five years to get anything produced. Even in TV, the return is so much quicker – you produce a show in two weeks and then one week later it’s on the air. It’s just the way I’m wired; I don’t have a tremendous amount of patience. Especially for Hollywood stuff, where for a lot of the time it’s not really productive, it’s just waiting or getting notes from executives, and it’s not creative.

But you have been acting in movies lately. You were in two big movies a couple of years ago ["Marie and Bruce" and Woody Allen’s "Melinda and Melinda"].
I’ve done a little bit of acting. I just did a movie this year called "Fired!" [a documentary, also featuring several other comics], which came out and it’s now on DVD. I’m not really an actor per se; I’m capable of being natural for about a scene or so before I get found out. When Woody Allen cast me, that was kind of exciting. And he didn’t fire me. He had fired a lot of people, but I didn’t get fired.

How did you get cast in that movie?
I met this casting agent, Juliet Taylor, and she cast me in this movie with Julianne Moore ["Marie and Bruce"] and that went pretty well, so she showed the tape of that movie to Woody Allen, and he cast me. So I was very hot for about a month there; I was getting cast in everything. I’m between roles now; I’m waiting for the next big two-line part to come my way.

But I love being in movies because since I’m not really an actor, to me it’s like winning a prize on a game show and just showing up and looking at real actors do what they do. And they feed you, and you get to lie down in the trailer a lot. And then every now and then somebody tells me to go to the set and say one sentence, and then I go back to eating and sleeping. It’s a great job. Plus I got to do a scene with Julianne Moore and that was nothing to complain about.

A love scene?
You know, I thought it was going to be a love scene, but it was actually a scene where I met her at a party and I bored her to death. So it wasn’t as sexy as I’d hoped it would be. But she did kiss me off-camera, when it was time for me to leave. They said, "Say goodbye to Andy Borowitz," and everybody cheered, and she gave me a nice kiss. I would have paid for that, I think.

And I also got to kiss Amanda Peet goodbye on the Woody Allen film. I always like to get on good enough platonic terms with the beautiful lead actresses, just so I can get a kiss goodbye; that’s very important.

That could be another Web site.
It could be a whole blog, and God knows, we need more blogs.

So those movies were "Melinda and Melinda" and "Marie and Bruce." Are you only in movies that are called somebody-and-somebody?
Yes. I was also in "Jules et Jim," I was in "Tango and Cash."

Yeah, I saw you in that, but I thought you were miscast.
But then I was in "Starsky and Hutch."

Anyway, are you actually seeking more acting?
Well, I like it when it seeks me. I’m doing a lot of stand-up. You know, like, I did "Live at Gotham" for Comedy Central, and I’m on TV a lot as myself – I’m on Keith Olberman’s show ["Countdown with Keith Olberman," on MSNBC].

Are you doing more stand-up then you had been doing?
Yeah. I started out doing stand-up; that’s how I started in college. Then I went out to Hollywood and did writing and producing. But I always kept my foot in it. Like when I was producing "Fresh Prince," I was the warm-up guy for the audience, so I had to be out there for two hours to keep the audience entertained in between scenes. And that’s really more demanding than when you’re doing real stand-up, because they’re not there to see you; they’re there to see Will Smith and you really have to win them over. So that was actually good experience, in terms of staying fresh and on top of it.

Then when I moved back to New York a few years ago, I decided that I wanted to explore it some more and I found that it was more fun, actually, because I wasn’t under as much pressure as when I was younger, because I had already done other things and I wasn’t really depending on it to make a living. So I have fun doing stand-up now.

When you come here, to the Improv, on November 6, what kind of things will you be doing?
Well, I talk about a lot about politics and pop culture. It’s sort of observations about our world. It’s not a straight political show. The one thing that’s a little different from most stand-up is that a lot of it is improvised and a lot of it is based on questions from the audience about what I think about the future and how I think things are going to unfold. It’s not like an act that I take from city to city and it’s the same wherever I go.

And obviously you can come up with new things every day because you do the Borowitz Report. Do you actually do that every day, by yourself?
I do it five days a week.

What if you can’t do it one day?
What do you mean, if I “can’t do it”?

I mean, if you’re really sick or something.
The only time I’ve ever missed a day was when there was a technical screw-up, like when the actual server was unable to shoot out the story. But I’ve never missed a day because of any incapacity on my part – I want to make that very, very clear. But it’s funny, because my subscribers don’t pay anything for it, and yet they act very outraged if I don’t deliver. So, if ever there was a group of entitled people, it’s my subscribers.

You know, I was thinking about your new book and I’m wondering if the book is the Democrats’ "October Surprise" for this election.

No, I think the Republicans have produced enough October Surprises on their own this time around. They don’t seem to have a handle on October Surprises this year. Usually, they’re very good at doing that, but this time it all seems to be coming back around and biting them in the ass.

But I’m not counting them out. One thing I’ve learned from writing The Republican Playbook is that they always seem to find a way to pull out last-minute victories. So people shouldn’t be celebrating too soon.

No. I’m not going to celebrate until after the re-count.
Exactly.

But I don’t want them to lose because of something like the Mark Foley issue; I want them to lose because they’re wrong on real issues.
Sure, but – well, shouldn’t their losing just be enough?

From Cool Cleveland contributor David Budin popcyclesATsbcglobal.net (:divend:)