January 17, 2015, I'll be interviewing the always hilarious Fred Willard onstage as part of Riot LA, the Los Angeles Alternative Comedy Festival. We're going to be talking about his 1960s coffeehouse comedy career and his time as a 1970s cult comedy favorite. Tickets are available here.
While most people know Fred Willard from the mockumentaries of Christopher Guest and cult favorites like This Is Spinal Tap or Fernwood 2Nite, his career goes back further than most people realize. Fred Willard was getting onstage during the Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene long before Woody Allen, Richard Pryor or Lily Tomlin did the same. Willard is actually a nightclub contemporary of Jonathan Winters, Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory and Lenny Bruce. When he played the hungry i in San Francisco in 1962 it was alongside an unknown Barbra Streisand. In 1966 Willard was slated to star in a spin-off of Get Smart. By 1970 Fred Willard was the opening act for Tom Jones! These are things you seldom hear about, but on January 17 we'll be talking about it at length at the Downtown Independent in Los Angeles. Hope to see you there.
