http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/ae/
Thursday, June 9, 2011
There was really a whole lot more to him before he started dieting. The cherubic comedian, who performs Saturday at the Byham Theater, says he's lost weight and would like to lose more.
"My first album was 'Show Me the Buffet,' and it really was where I was at the time," Pinette says. "I didn't know anything. There's a lot more to life now, and I think my act reflects that.
"Buddy Hackett once told me it took 15 years to be a great comic. I'd been doing it for 8 years, and I thought, 'That old man's crazy.' "
His manic, bleating comic delivery recalls the late comic and "Hollywood Squares" wisecracker Paul Lynde. And his imitation of another old-guard comic is so deftly dead-on, you'd swear he had swallowed Joan Rivers whole.
"My parents ask me, 'Why can't you be like your cousin Sheila?' " he says, mimicking Rivers' high-strung Jewish accent. "Sheila died at birth."
Pinette, who once joked that "my cholesterol count has a comma," has ranged far beyond the open-mike nights of his native Boston, where he embarked on a stand-up career in the mid-80s. He has several film and television roles on his resume, including "The Last Godfather," a broad Mafia comedy starring Harvey Keitel. He probably had his largest audience in 1998, when he played the carjack victim in the two-part finale of "Seinfeld."
In 2004, he donned a fat suit -- and a dress -- when he stepped into the role of matron Edna Turnblad in the touring production of the musical "Hairspray." He reprised the role on Broadway in 2005.
"It got me into theater again," he says. "If you make a mistake, you have to fix it the best you can, and you have to move on. That's what live theater is. It's much more terrifying than stand-up comedy."
Pinette lived in Pittsburgh for three summers. He says he worked at the Pitt Eye and Ear Institute.
"My brother-in-law was chief resident of plastic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh," Pinette says. He met his future wife, Pinette's sister, while she was pursuing her master's at Pitt.
"I think Pittsburgh is very underrated as a city. As far as medicine, as far as culture, I was really quite fascinated to be there."
He graduated from the University of Massachusetts in 1986 with a degree in accounting. But he strayed into stand-up, enticed by the vibrance of a Beantown comedy scene that included Denis Leary, Stephen Wright and Louis C.K.
"The idea of being a comic is being yourself onstage," he says. "It's the guy that made everybody in the dorm laugh; the guy that people say you should be a comic. But when you first start, you're really afraid and you're scripted. Letting go of that is a wonderful prospect."
Read more: John Pinette says comedy is just about being yourself - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/ae/more/s_741162.html#ixzz1P3vcLrRA
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