Rick Reynolds Only the Truth Is Funny
© Los Angeles Times. October 31, 1991
Hollywood Story in Which Truth Pays
by Robert Epstein
Arts: Rick Reynolds' one-man theater piece has made his career. It's all a 'weird perk,' says the writer-player of his hot, new status in the industry.
Tough to tell the 60 minutes when fame and fortune, like lightning, strikes.
The oatmeal abet Wilford Brimley made it to Hollywood with a measured corporeality of maturity. Another advocate of a sort, Ruth Westheimer, did the same. And non to be forgotten, Clara Peller, who found late-in-life acclaim request about the organic structure of hamburger.
Yet this is an historic period where advertisers observe their beef in goggle box audiences primarily from xviii to 35 and where the flick and music businesses pursue youth in Ponce de Leon unmarried-mindedness.
Simply at that place are people who swim against the demographic tides and requite new meaning to middle age and beyond.
People like Rick Reynolds and Charles Joffe.
Here's Reynolds, his biological clock sweeping past 39, the years of stand-up one-act clubs behind him, his hair thinning, his shoulders stooping, in his words "bland and nondescript," nightly telling the Reynolds family unit saga, wart-gags and all, at the Canon Theatre in his one-man show, "Only the Truth Is Funny." But for him, life has never been busier nor show business livelier.
When you have the presidents of iv tv set networks asking you to write something, annihilation, just so long as information technology's funny, thirty minutes long, funny, upwardly to network standards, and funny, you've reached the peak, you've climbed every mountain, you lot're Rocky at the top of the steps.
That's been happening to Reynolds in the viii weeks he'south been at the Canon and in the past year since he talked his way into the San Francisco Improv with a xc-minute, one-man theater piece in a showroom where 10 minutes of stand-up is a career. At present for Reynolds, it'southward show-business executives in hot pursuit. Directors at the door. Producers on their cellulars.
It's all a "weird perk," says Reynolds of Hollywood. He's far more comfy beingness known every bit Cooper'southward (his newborn son) dad or equally Petaluma'south 2nd all-time-known export (poultry comes first ) . "It'southward hard to assimilate. Information technology's so weird that someone can make a lot of money doing this and people signal you out when what I do is no more important than baking bread. Merely I bulldoze upwards to the theater at night and I see people waiting out there and it's all focused on me. Information technology'due south really a thrill. It would be sad if information technology weren't my career."
What his singular functioning has apparently demonstrated is that the Reynolds rap is real, he tin can write and he can act. That'due south why he has a few projects and some choices to make once the current bear witness closes Nov. 10 to make room for the scheduled return of "Love Letters.
Reynolds may exist spending his mid-passage years at all of the below:
- Developing a television network project, a series pilot or two.
- Writing a characteristic film.
- Taping "But the Truth Is Funny" for Starting time, the cablevision network that is too a co-producer of the live show.
- Seeing a longer, book version of the testify come out from Hyperion, a partitioning of Disney.
- Taping "Only the Truth . . ." for the new recording company Gang of Vii.
- Or taking the show back on the road. It's only been presented in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. It but might be set up for, say, Seattle.
Reynolds has options most of u.s.a. can simply dream about. The important thing is that he has options, that he tin "control his destiny."
The quoted words belong to Charles Joffe. He and his partner of 35 years, Jack Rollins, know something about options. As producers and managers, they've been involved in the careers of Woody Allen, David Letterman, Robin Williams, Elaine May, Billy Crystal and a few others.They also know something most retirement: It doesn't always live up to its billing.
Consider their at present flood plate, one year after getting unretired:
- Their R and J Productions is developing a pilot with Lorimar for a half-hour series for ABC Television set.
- They have a deal to produce four characteristic movies for Showtime, ane light-green-lighted, three yet to be decided.
- They have a moviemaking bargain with TriStar.
- And then in that location's that handshake deal (that's their fashion of doing business organisation) to manage the destiny of Rick Reynolds.
Not exactly most people's idea of retirement. "Information technology's a juggling act," says Joffe. Five years ago, Joffe retired, followed later past Rollins, although they maintain their Woody Allen and David Letterman connections. For three years, Joffe taught at UCLA Extension, telling actors, directors, writers and producers what he knew best: how to turn professional.
Lured to San Francisco to see Reynolds perform, he telephoned his partner and told him, ''Permit's become back to work.'' There would be no thoughts of senior discounts.
What they saw was incisive, bitter human comedy, a new talent. Talent can get you to San Francisco. Connections get you to Hollywood. And connections is what Joffe and Rollins have. Their project: Become Reynolds known beyond the Bay Surface area and by showbusiness conclusion makers. ''We knew he had all the ingredients,'' Joffe says. ''At present that we've gotten this far we will sit down down and run across what Rick wants to do.'''
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