Yello’s “Oh Yeah” is a big part of that movie and, to my mind, not dissimilar to some of what you do. One of these is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. You reference a number of teen films throughout the book that were important to you during your years in Great Falls. I thought it would be cool to have that kind of a breakout element- something that existed outside of the book that could be kind of a portal to other experiences. That was something I thought of before writing the book.
Along the way, there would be improvisational ideas like I would do onstage, but in a writing form where I would be like, “Well, let’s just do this” and “This will be funny.” So it was pretty natural. I always had the idea to mess with the form of a book that was always in there. But yeah, they were along for the ride.Īt what point in the process did you come up with the idea of adding those intermittent micro chapters? This was my first book, so I don’t have anything else to compare it to. There were some notes-structural things or things to delve into a little bit more in detail-but they were just constructive notes. She remarks on the large number of autos in the parking lot and he tells her: “Every one of these cars is someone trying to keep me from doing what I want.” Did you experience that with your publisher given the experimental nature of your book? In that same interview with Albert Brooks, he recalls taking his future wife to see his office at Paramount. So it’s definitely a little bit of a risk, in the sense that I didn’t know if people were going to like it or not, but I had to go for it. I also want it to appeal to people who are playful and curious-or maybe people who are playful and curious but are not like that in their everyday life, and things like this give them permission to feel that way. I think it’s definitely not for everyone, but I think that how I operate is from a place of what would I want to experience and what do I think is going to be entertaining. In a way, I’m playing with the form of a memoir, so I hear that.
There were things I experiment with in the book where I was like, “I don’t know, maybe people might not like it.” I even heard some criticism from my friends who told me that serious readers might have a problem with the book because of things like the expressive text font or the weird micro chapters with the jokes and things like that. I just kind of go for it and hope for the best.ĭid that change at all with the book, since you were working in a new medium that people engage in a different way? Yeah, that’s a perfect way of describing it.
I just listened to an interview with Albert Brooks in which he said that he never allowed himself to get too swayed by audience reactions because he needed to trust in what felt funny to him. Great Falls, MT is a warm and welcoming work that blends a compelling personal narrative with musings on the films of John Hughes and builds to a tender conclusion-be sure to cue the soundtrack while reading the final passages (and don’t miss the inevitable post-credits scenes). This would eventually lead him to Seattle, where he first gained notoriety in the band Maktub, and then on to the comedy clubs of New York City and Hollywood soundstages as the bandleader of IFC’s Comedy Bang! Bang! and CBS’s The Late Late Show with James Corden.Īs befits Watts’ comedic sensibility, his autobiography often turns convention on its head, with ample digressions, interstitial chapters that feel like improvisational comedy bits and bonus QR code content. The book- Great Falls, MT: Fast Times, Post-Punk Weirdos and a Tale of Coming Home-shares Watts’ account of growing up in the 1980s and finding a group of like-minded outcasts, who would help shape his identity.
And it was called the strangest, most exotic word I had ever heard. This place would lay the foundation for everything I would someday become…even now, after all these years of living in some of our country’s greatest cities, of traveling the globe and performing with massive stars in front of millions of people-even now, this place is still where I always come back to.Īt the time though, all I knew about this brand-new place was that it was big and open and wide. In his recently published memoir, Watts writes: Although initially disorienting and intimidating, his new country would prove to be the keeper, and Watts’ American hometown animates his imagination to this very day. The son of a Black American father and white French mother, who met when Charles Watts was stationed overseas as an air force serviceman, Reggie lived in Germany, Italy and Spain over the course of his young life. Reggie Watts moved to the United States at the age of four.