Onstage or oncamera, Martin Mull perhaps best epitomizes that smug, smarmy, self-righteous know-it-all you'd most like to punch in the mouth. Unless he's on your side. Mull's current incarnation of Mr. Sincerity can be seen in the CBS midseason-replacement sitcom Domestic Life. When Contributing Editor David Rensin knocked on the front door of Mull's Hollywood Hills home, the suave actor/comedian/painter was surprised that he had made it that far despite the attack dog. The pair talked in Mull's Metropolitan Home living room. The dog lurked outside.

Q 1

PLAYBOY: Several years ago, a magazine article described you as "almost famous." Are you famous yet?

Martin Mull: My mailman is a guy named Rayfield Dupree. He was a finalist in the triple jump at the Montreal Olympics. To me, he's famous; but to the guy down the street, he's just the mailman. So it's relative. Being famous has about as much to do with my well-being as do my nipples. I take that back. My nipples are handy for helping me find my cigarettes when I'm drunk.

Q 2

PLAYBOY: What about you should impress people the most when they meet you?

Martin Mull: That I get away with all this. No. It's a good question that pretty much goes to the deepest, realest part of me. So I'd have to say--my clothes. Actually, if I could change anything in my life, it would be my clothes. I cannot wear them. If you're not 40 inches in the chest and 26 in the waist, you can't wear today's clothes. I always feel that if I bent over, even if I were in a tux, the crack of my ass would be showing.

Q 3

PLAYBOY: Your stage persona is thought of as, well, smug. Who is your smug ideal?

Martin Mull: Moi? It's hard to say, since my stage persona is based on various parts of people's personalities that I have observed for many years. I picked up a lot of it when I lived in a singles apartment complex, one of those word-of-mouth immediate-occupancy places. It was half filled with stewardesses and half with weight lifters. I used to hear a lot of things around the pool, like, "I don't believe that asshole said that!" But I'll tell you one guy who really bothers me on that level: Fred Rogers. He has that holier-than-thou attitude about how his neighborhood is so friendly. And you just know it isn't.

Q 4

PLAYBOY: Some critics have suggested that your character is, in fact, a forerunner of David Letterman's. Even of Steve Martin's. If that's true, where did you steal your chops?

Martin Mull: From Bob and Ray. But your statement isn't true. There is a collective unconscious, as per Carl Jung. Steve and I are both Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who have that incredible rootlessness. It's your typical Rexall-drugstore upbringing. We can't fall back on being Italian or Jewish. We're also roughly the same age and grew up in the same income bracket. Letterman is from pretty much the same cloth. So why wouldn't we have the same inputs? Maybe the bottom line is just that I'm older.

Q 5

PLAYBOY: If you were to teach a college class in pop sociology 20 years from now, how would you explain your success?

Martin Mull: Would the word fluke still be in our vocabulary? Let's hope so. It's simple. A lot of what is put out there for mass consumption is so homogenized that is comes out as safe as milk. But I believe there's an intrinsic irreverence in the American psyche, and when something comes along that offers even an echo of that irreverence, people respond to it.