He said he thought he would eventually write another screenplay. “I don’t want to just do another movie just to do another movie,” he said. “I’m having fun with what I’m doing, and when I feel like, ‘Oh, I really want to do another movie,’ I will. I’m waiting for that moment.
“You get grossed out by yourself,” he said, explaining the difficulties of writing a movie. “There’s something about the disposability in these other things that I’m doing, like stand-up, or something sketch-oriented. But if it’s a chunk of something, then it’s just that I’m-grossed-out-by-myself factor. You know what I mean? A lot of me all at once, and I’m skeeved by myself, and, you know, all that self-hatred stuff. If it’s fleeting, you don’t have to look at that stuff.”
Onstage, there are flashes behind Mr. Showalter’s comedy that, disguised wittily or not, resemble real honest-to-goodness rage. A lot of comedians tend to have this in common, The Observer pointed out.
“Are you saying I’m angry?” Mr. Showalter asked quietly. He was wearing sunglasses—he said he wears them all the time (“I prefer cold and dark,” he said. “Rainy.”)—which made it hard to tell if he was offended. Um, yes, perhaps a little? “Oh, without a doubt. I’m angry for no particular reason,” he said. “It’s just something … I produce anger in the same way that I … pee. I can’t explain the anger, but I do, I have it. It’s that feeling of, what if I ram this car into another car? It’s unexplainable outbursts of rage that aren’t based in any real real-life unhappiness.” He smiled. (It was hard to tell if he was joking.)
Mr. Showalter, who grew up in Princeton, N.J. (his mo
ther is the esteemed literary critic Elaine Showalter), has lived in Brooklyn for the past eight years, after a decade in Manhattan. He loves his neighborhood (he helped organize a benefit for Develop Don’t Destroy earlier this year), and is one of those New York celebrities that you get used to seeing all the time, like an Atlantic Avenue Ethan Hawke. “The thing about New York is that this city doesn’t revolve around the entertainment industry. You can live a very normal life. I mean normal in quotes. In Los Angeles nothing is done without a result in mind. I’m not result-orientated, I’m more journey-is-the-reward. There’s this sort of competitive environment there. I will not compete unless it’s chess or softball.
“I feel like my career, to the extent that I have one, is like a bird’s nest … just little twigs and scraps of felt and stuff,” he said. “I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.” Time up, Mr. Showalter crushed out a final cigarette and tossed out his coffee cup. He picked up a copy of the Post, and headed off to take the subway.
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