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Winnipeg not the strangest place Arnold's been lately

Surprise appearance at Roseanne's roast

By: Brad Oswald

Posted: 09/6/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

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Arnold at the roast of his ex-wife Roseanne. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

COMEDY PREVIEW

Tom Arnold

Friday and Saturday, 7:45 and 10:30 p.m.
Rumor's Comedy Club
Tickets $30 at Rumor's

As he rides in the back of a car ferrying him from his home in the Hollywood hills to the Staples Center, Tom Arnold ponders briefly, via cell phone, the much longer journey that will deliver him to Winnipeg later this week.

"I get a lot of standup (comedy) offers, and about every five or six weeks, I'll take one," explains Arnold, who begins a two-night, four-show stand at Rumor's Comedy Club on Friday night. "I check out the place, and see if I've heard something nice about the club, and I'll head out on the road.

"I ran into Jim Carrey last night, and he said, 'You're going to Winnipeg?' And I said, 'Yeah, what's it like?' And he said, 'In the winter, it's horrible; it's the coldest place in the world. But it's not winter, so it'll be nice."

The 53-year-old actor/comedian/TV personality says he constantly looks for opportunities to return to his standup roots, even though the travel and pre-show preparation sometimes test his resolve.

"I love it when I get there," he says. "I love it when I'm doing it. It's the travel, and psyching myself up to do it, that's the hard part. A lot of good things come out of standup, when I'm working hard at it. I also write movies and do other kinds of writing assignments, and everything good that comes out of standup refreshes you and helps with other parts of your career.

"And when else, in this business, do you get to talk to normal people? Not on a movie set, and not when you're sitting by yourself in your office, pounding out a script. So doing standup is a pretty good gauge of what's going on out there."

Winnipeg might be a bit of an unexpected and out-of-the-way destination, but as far as strange places for Arnold to find himself are concerned, it doesn't hold a candle to the recent Comedy Central roast of Roseanne Barr in which he made a surprise appearance.

The special only aired a month ago, but his participation, and the delicate negotiations among Arnold's people, Roseanne's people and the network's people have already been elevated to showbiz-legend status.

"I was 100 per cent sure that she didn't want me to do it, and I was 100 per cent sure that the people who care about me didn't want me to do it," Arnold says. In fact, he and Roseanne -- whose tumultuous four-year marriage in the early '90s ended as badly as any union could -- hadn't spoken or been in the same room for more than 18 years.

"But I figured, what the heck ... I just felt, in the back of my mind, that maybe there was something there."

The back and forth exchange of phone calls, e-mails, proposals and suggestions went on until the last few hours before the roast was taped, and in the end, Arnold's participation hinged on the blessing of his wife and publicist, and a single demand to the roast's guest of honour.

"Roseanne had to agree, in writing, to say one nice thing," he says. "It sounds like we were being paranoid, but there's a history there."

Eventually, word came from Roseanne's camp that she had agreed to offer the observation that Arnold always made her laugh.

"For an ex-husband, that's about the nicest thing anyone could say," he says. "From a woman's perspective, it might be what you say about an idiot ex-boyfriend -- 'He was an idiot, but he always made me laugh' -- but for me, that was as good as it was going to get."

In the end, Arnold made his appearance ("I could feel the people gasping when I walked out," he says), told a few jokes, offered a kind word and made his exit, thinking his best plan was to get out while the getting was good. But before he could leave the backstage area, Roseanne sought him out and they exchanged a few words.

"She said some very nice things, and that was it," he says. "Yeah, I'm definitely glad I did it."

On this day, however, Arnold is more focused on the immediate future -- it's opening night of the NFL season, and his beloved New York Giants are about to face the Dallas Cowboys.

"Hopefully, the Giants will not start as slowly and won't make it as scary as last year," he says of the current Super Bowl champions. "I'm very excited about football season; I mean, for some reason, I was even watching the pre-season games."

Asked if he's as big a hockey fan as he is a football follower, Arnold laughs, and offers this:

"I went to the last 20 games that the L.A. Kings won wearing the same black jacket and T-shirt, same pants, same underwear, same socks. All the way through the finals, when they won, it was very lucky. People started counting ... there was a lot of pressure on me at the end, because I didn't want to be the guy who lost it for them by changing (my clothes)."

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 6, 2012 D5

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