Aug. 7, 2002
All publications Front Page Nightspots Blacklines En La Vida Out! Resource Guide Current WCT Issue	The Co-Host with the Most from the Coast: Bob Smith By Gregg Shapiro   Bob Smith, Funny Gay Male and Lambda Literary Award-winning author, has been a familiar face in Chicago. He was the master of ceremonies of the Lammy Award banquet in 2001 and, as recently as the spring of 2002, he was in town to take part part in the It's A She Thang comedy show, as a fill-in. He returns to town in early August to co-host the Windy City Radio Stage (at Halsted and Belmont) for Northalsted Market Days. Gregg Shapiro: The last two times I interviewed you, we talked about your books Openly Bob and Way To Go Smith. Have you begun working on a new book? Bob Smith: Yes. I'm hoping it will come out in the fall of next year (2003). It's a novel. It's starts in L.A. It's about a writer's assistant on a TV show who gets fired and he meets a salmon fisherman who's an archaeologist from Alaska (laughs). The third person, the key person in the novel, is a Robert Downey, Jr.-type actor who has just gotten out of jail and he's bad. He was a guest on the TV show and ends up in Alaska shooting a movie and asks the salmon fisherman if he can go out fishing with him, so all three of them end up fishing on the Bering Sea. GS: Is it a serious novel? BS: No! It's totally comic. ... The people in Alaska are very … fantastic, they're really great characters, and interesting and even the gay people have three identities versus the measly two in the lower 48. What I'm calling it right now is The Alaska Fiend. Who knows if this will be, I know it sort of sounds like a monster thing. It's based on this guy I met who, and I've used this line in the book, he said to me, "Bob, I just want to warn you. This week at the party, I'm getting completely plastered. I'm a champagne fiend. I can't even go to weddings anymore. The last time I went to a wedding I was walking around, my shirt was askew, my tie was undone. I was grabbing bottle of champagne. I don't even go to weddings (anymore)." He just went on and on about what a champagne fiend he is and my character becomes an Alaska fiend. GS: Speaking of writing, you've been writing for Out magazine for a number of years now, what do you like best about the column that you get to do for them? BS: I like that it's short (laughs). I like doing the list, and I have to say that it was kind of my idea. I said to them, "Every other magazine does a list-type format, why don't you guys do a list?" What's really great about it is that about half the ideas are their ideas. They come to me like, "Hey, we want to do something about Six Feet Under in the March issue, do you have any ideas?" GS: Do you have a favorite list? BS: I think my gay wedding superstitions list, because it sort of became one of those Internet things where everyone was e-mailing it to people and then people were adding their own ideas. GS: You did some writing for Mad TV. Do you have anymore TV writing gigs? BS: I don't have anything. I've been working with a friend of mine. We've been trying to coming up with, and we have, a pitch for a very commercial, high-concept film comedy. So, we've been working on all of those. Things like Robin Hood&emdash;set in a high school, steals from the rich kids and gives to the poor, and then we work out stories and characters and all sorts of things. We've been going out on meetings and pitching these, because I wrote a long screenplay last year and what happened was that we made the most expensive independent film script ever. It was a comedy, but we tried to do it, very basically about adult children splitting up their dysfunctional parents, like the reverse of The Parent Trap. We made it really real, but still funny. Then I'm trying to put together a sketch group here. GS: Like the Groundlings? BS: Yeah, and it would be with gay and lesbian performers, but it would not be gay and lesbian comedy, in the sense that I don't want to just do sketches about gay and lesbian … GLBT life. When I worked on Mad TV, I wrote sketches about everything and I feel like the whole gay and lesbian thing doesn't interest me in the long run, to do a sketch show about that. But I think it would be fun to work with a lot of gay and lesbian people and just have that be part of the thing. We have a couple of places here (in L.A.) that we can perform and I know some really talented people from the sketch group with the Nellie Olesons, that, I think that I could put together a really good group. GS: You're coming to Chicago to co-host Market Days and you've had quite an interesting history of MC duties. BS: You can still do your thing and you can play off of what other people say, which is fun. That's sort of a new thing for me, to be more spontaneous and trust that. When I first started, everything had to be written out and I had to spend three years thinking about the joke (laughs). Now, I've gotten to the point where if I think of something five minutes before I go on I can sort of tell, "Oh, I think this will work." GS: What's the most bizarre thing you've been asked to MC? BS: I was asked to MC the Gay Male Porn awards out here. I'm really sorry it didn't come through, because that would've been a really fun gig. ... I love that they just take themselves to seriously, like, "He's been a pioneer in blowjobs." GS: You've been performing on a number of the gay cruises that went to Alaska. Do you feel a real connection to Alaska? BS: I actually do. I've been there about six or seven times. ... I know some amazing people there who have become really close friends. Also, I just thought it was kind of untapped comic material from a gay point of view. I've always loved Evelyn Waugh's novels, this is really pretentious, but I have his travel novels where he goes to Ethiopia and watches the coronation of Haile Sellassie, and then comes back and writes a novel and a travel book about it. And I thought that no one seems to do that anymore. So, I'm sort of trying to do that.	Smith
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