Q 6

PLAYBOY: Where are you when you think of your most outrageous lines, song titles and ideas?

Martin Mull: Often, it happens when I'm driving--which is why my wife, Wendy, does most of the driving. I tend to ramble inside myself. Because of my training as a painter, I'm much more interested in the kind of green the light is than that it means to go or that the guy behind me is leaning on his horn. Another "place" is my favorite time in life: that little twilight zone between dreaming and waking up, before you realize, Jesus, it's 9:30 and I've got to take a shower, because I've got an appointment at ten. There are about ten minutes there that make very little sense. The other morning, I thought of a whole film where a guy marries the wrong girl. He's really in love with one of the attendants. It's called Bridesmaid Revisited.

Q 7

PLAYBOY: How long have you loved yourself? And how well?

Martin Mull: Loving myself doesn't usually take that long. The parts of me that I like best are the parts that surprise me. But in the classical sense of the word, I'm not sure that I do love myself. I tolerate myself. For example, I tolerate my lack of interest in lots of things because of what I do. Given a choice between speaking out about some social issue and doing the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle, I'd do the latter. It's part of my training as a painter. I learned in art school that one has to put himself in a state of imbalance. If you're painting for eight to ten hours a day, there's got to be nothing more important than the goddamn apple and the bowl. The distance between the edge of the bowl and the edge of the canvas is every bit as important as the Gaza strip. So it's in those moments when I'm either so out of touch with myself or so in touch with myself that other things just float through me that I like myself best. When I get on the bathroom scale, I hate myself.

Q 8

PLAYBOY: Describe a recurrent dream.

Martin Mull: It's a strange one. It's as if I'm looking into a shoe box set on edge with the open portion facing me. There are holes punched in both narrow ends and a string running between them. The string seems to be moving, as if it's being pulled through, but I can't be sure, because my field of vision is restricted to the shoe box, almost like a TV screen. And it goes and goes and goes, until all of a sudden, it backlashes, like a fishing line. Then it unties and keeps going. I don't know what it means, though it probably has something to do with the concept of continuity versus chaos, with the idea of ebb and flow. There are no shoe salesmen in my family.

Q 9

PLAYBOY: Are you often grateful that your parents didn't name you Norman?

Martin Mull: Yes. But it would have been worse if they'd named me Abner.

Q 10

PLAYBOY: You hosted both Fernwood 2-Night and America 2-Night. Name your ideal talk-show panel.

Martin Mull: Steve and Eydie. That is, Steve Allen and Idi Amin. Or Steve Garvey and Edy Williams. Edie Sedgwick and Steve Martin? A whole evening of Steve and Edies.

I might also have Bob and Ray. And Fred Willard. I once had Fred for a guest when I hosted The Tonight Show. That's pre-Joan Rivers--yes, I know many think I should have gotten the permanent slot, but I think they went through college transcripts and I just hadn't taken the right courses. Boy, that college degree is important. Anyway, there was some nervousness in the NBC offices about Fred and me. They thought we'd just be doing Fernwood. But I said, "Absolutely not," so they let us do it. Now, I was really trying to be aboveboard with Fred. I introduced him, said what a pleasure it had been working with him. When he sat down, I asked what he'd been doing. A nice, open question; no joke, no twinkle in the eye, no segue into something we had planned. He said, "Well, I've been very busy. I've been working on a novel." And I thought, Thank God, we're out of hot water. He's actually going to talk and be real. So I said, "Really, Fred?" And he said, "Yeah. Those things take forever to read." That's when it got silly. For the next five minutes, it was Fernwood 2-Night.

Q 11

PLAYBOY: What are your favorite gag items?

Martin Mull: There were times in my life that would have been highly punctuated had the person across from me been offered his martini in a dribble glass. I would have been thrilled. Another gag item I am very fond of is the small rug you sometimes see in abandoned gas stations that depicts Washington crossing the Delaware, the moon landing, Elvis, J.F.K. No one should be without one.

Q 12

PLAYBOY: What does everyone expect from you that you hate giving?

Martin Mull: Something my wife gets all the time when she's with somebody who knows me only through the media is "Is he constantly funny?" Most people who know my work wouldn't ask that. But some people just expect me to always give a clever retort off the top of my head, as if there were a button one could push and out would come hilarity. That's unfair. To expect me to be funny instantly is the same as saying, if I go to a party with a friend who happens to be a plumber, "OK, you tell us this joke, and meanwhile, Roy, why don't you go into the kitchen and get that fucking sink unstopped? OK?" Another thing I hate giving is spare change. To me, it's a contradiction in terms.