Comedian channels Jewish humor for the mainstream

Whether you call it assimilation or a performer's imperative to entertain the masses, Paul Reiser's comedy doesn't trade in overtly Jewish references. His character in the fondly remembered sitcom "Mad About You" was plainly Jewish, yet Reiser was careful not to push too far in that direction.

"On TV, I always felt that by defining a group it felt exclusive, and sometimes I was on the wrong side of that and sometimes I was on the right side," Reiser explains. "But I always felt it was a bit wrong, and I never felt comfortable when a show was too Jewish. I thought, 'You know, a lot of people aren't going to get that.'"

His screenplay for "The Thing About My Folks," an amusing and sentimental slice of "lite" family angst in which he plays Peter Falk's son, springs from the same instinct. The Kleinmans may be recognizably Jewish, but the themes and emotions are unmistakably universal.

"I wasn't trying to make them more Jewish and I certainly wasn't trying to make it less Jewish," the personable Reiser parries. "To me, it's very affectionately a Jewish family, but hopefully not to the exclusion of anybody who wants to warm up to this movie."

Reiser began writing when he was just 11. His first piece was a Hebrew School play entitled "The Beatles Meet Purim."

"Ringo was Queen Vashti," Reiser recalls with a slight grin during an interview earlier this month.

It isn't clear if he's joshing or telling the truth, not that it matters. Reiser's natural timing has a lot to do with it, and there's something innately amusing about the dark orange shirt he pairs with a gray sport coat and crisp blue jeans. It's not clown orange, but it has a bit of L.A. irreverence to it.

That's hardly an accident, for Reiser has lived in Tinseltown for two decades. Nonetheless, he still has strong ties to his native Manhattan.

"I can only write things that take place in New York," he confides. "I don't know how to write, 'Somebody drives up La Cienega.' I only know how somebody drives up Third Avenue. I've tried it. I can't write 'Sepulveda.' It's not funny."

If Reiser associates humor with New York, it's because that's where he discovered the great comics of another age. Naturally, most were Jewish.

"I don't know that my comedy reflects that, but I know that was the air I breathed. I loved Alan King and Jackie Mason — the really Jewish standups — and Shecky Green and Buddy Hackett and Myron Cohen. These are guys that I embraced and felt a kinship to in a disproportionate way — sometimes almost more than my parents, certainly a lot more than a lot of my colleagues."

Reiser takes a quick breath and barrels on. "Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, their work together was like a huge adrenaline shot that just bolted me into comedy when I heard ["The 2,000-Year-Old Man"]. That's nothing if not built on the foundation of American Judaism, and that character in Mel's brain embodies that."

It's great that he honors his predecessors, but how does Reiser see Jewish humor looking forward? "First of all, Jewish humor never looks forward to anything," he says with his trademark blend of earnestness and self-mockery. "It's always cringing a little bit and recoiling."

Then he wrestles with the question for a minute, candidly revealing both his Jewishness and his assimilation.

"The truth is, when I strayed farthest — when I was in an entirely non-Jewish community — was when I felt the identity the strongest, and the bond and the clinging and the longing. I guess it's sort of a lazy thing, because I want to enjoy it without necessarily having to perpetuate it myself. If I know my wife is going to be setting the Passover table, I can relax. I don't have to be the one who's reminding and teaching the [children]."

Reiser pauses a beat. "Maybe I just don't want to set the table."




"The Thing About My Folks" opens Friday, Sept. 30.